


in the midst of the winter

by PinkHydrangea



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Unplanned Pregnancy, this is my obligatory soap opera ultra drama au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-24 04:50:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13803768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkHydrangea/pseuds/PinkHydrangea
Summary: the middle of a warring winter isn't really the best time to worry about unnecessary problems(aka my soap opera au where they pull a genealogy of the holy war and get too frisky)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey this is my obligatory soap opera drama semi-au in which zeke and tatiana straight up pull an fe4 and he gets her knocked up in the middle of the war, GREAT, LIKE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT,

There are roaming hands sliding over bare skin.

There’s a rather fierce storm outside—occasionally, a crack of lightning will light up the room, and the sudden sound will scare the softer of the two lovers. She stops her hands and flinches, wincing at the sudden bright light and strong clap, but the man shushes her, cups the back of her head, and pulls her towards him to kiss her forehead in comfort. She scoffs, chiding him for treating her like a child frightened, but he only laughs at her in response.

They get back to touching each other.

A hand over a neck, one sliding over a chest, a brushing of lips that turns hard and desperate. The touches go from gentle to demanding, grabbing roughly and craving affection and love. The lovers gasp against each other, panting for breath, and collapse against the bed. The storm keeps raging, crashing over their home, but he fumblingly grabs the curtains as she kisses him, sliding them shut and leaving them in almost utter darkness.

Their clothes come off, piece by piece, until they have none. A choking gasp fills the air as they come together. His lips fall upon her neck, kissing comfortingly, lovingly, adoringly. He runs his fingers up the curve of her spine, admiring every inch of her, and swallows her moaning with a kiss to her lips. She tastes sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Sweet like the subtle taste of a fruit, perhaps. Sweet, delicious, soft.

Lightning cracks through the sky again, but this time, they don’t pay it any mind. The sound of wind blowing over the house covers up the sounds of sheets rumpling and legs shifting over bedding. A wave crashes down on the shore in the near distance, drowning out the sound of moans and begging. A boom of thunder drowns him out as he mutters her name, groaning. He leans down to kiss her, but she reaches up and yanks him down first.

Most of the night is spent just like that; when they’re done, they clean each other, kiss once again, and lie down to sleep.

* * *

It’s cold outside.

Tatiana has always preferred the heat to the cold, but being Rigelian right down to her marrow, she’s always been able to cope with the weather. So long as she bundles up a little and keeps a fire going wherever she is—such as her house or the church—it’s fine. She doesn’t notice it much, especially when compared to Zeke, who shudders and complains when he has to be outside. As if it wasn’t already obvious from his accent and facial structure that he isn’t Rigelian.

But, recently, she can’t warm up. She thinks this is odd after a couple days of a constant chill, and arms herself with another sweater, heavier stockings under her dress, and her best fur-lined boots. Tatiana sits by the fire, knitting and sewing what she can with the limited supplies available during wartime, but still can’t stop shuddering and trembling. She gets closer to the fire, feeds it logs and kindling until it’s blazing almost dangerously high, but it doesn’t do much to warm her bones.

The chills, Tatiana decides, that's what it is. It certainly feels like the chills she gets at the onset of the flu. She’s glad Zeke isn’t home much, for the first time ever, because she would hate if she’s caught something contagious that could infect him. She gets medicine from the church, takes a couple of days off work, and waits for the sickness to hit her full swing, like a big heavy sack of rocks.

It doesn't. Tatiana doesn’t get the flu. She’s still cold, but she doesn’t get so much as a sniffle.

That’s bizarre, she thinks, and when Zeke comes home next, he agrees with her. He double-checks her temperature, putting the back of one hand against his forehead and the other on hers, but shakes his head, says her temperature is right as rain, and snuggles with her to try and fight the cold off. It works, just a little, but even the strong arms and broad chest of her lover can’t warm her up that well.

And then, really soon after the chill has taken root in her bones and she’s come to just accept it as part of her living conditions, the sickness hits. It’s not the flu, though. It’s not a cold. It’s a turning in her stomach, insistent and annoying. It’s nausea. It hits her randomly throughout the day, especially when she’s eating or cooking. The first time she actually throws up is another rare time that Zeke is home, when she’s cooking a small dinner. It’s a dish she makes often, but for some reason, this time, the wilting spinach smells _wrong,_ and she finds herself hunched over the sink, her hair pulled back by Zeke while she vomits.

Weird.

The nausea gets worse. She can’t cook anymore, because the smell of anything cooking turns her poor stomach upside down. A friend goes into town and brings back macarons, a delicacy in their rough times, but Tatiana takes one whiff and refuses them. Sometimes she’s just lying down, reading a book, and then she has to rush to the sink or the washroom to upheave her entire stomach and then some.

Tatiana can’t keep down food, and she cries over it. Food is getting harder and harder to come by, but she throws most of it up. She feels awful for wasting it, and every time she finishes emptying the contents of her stomach, she sobs; something else she finds odd. She’ll cry over just about anything, she admits that about herself, but this feels like a different sort of crying, somehow. Like, she doesn’t even feel the onset, but she just finds herself an absolute blubbering mess before she knows it. She can't control herself.

“Tatiana.” A childhood friend comes over at one point to exchange food and looks nervous upon hearing about her condition. “Chills? Nausea? Not being able to keep down anything but bread?”

“Weird, right?” Tatiana replies. She looks at the baby strapped to her friend’s shoulder—an adorable, chubby little thing who is yanking her mother’s hair—and smiles and coos at her.

The friend looks exasperated as she sets strawberry jam down on the counter. “Tatiana, as a medical professional, doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“I’m sure it’s just stress and the bad weather,” Tatiana argues, still fixated on the baby. “Hewwo! Hewwo, precious! I mean, Zeke’s situation… It’s stressful, you know.”

The mother chews the inside of her cheek. “Well, let’s say someone—a woman, maybe—came to you with these symptoms. How would you diagnose them?”

The baby shrieks softly and flaps her arms at Tatiana, delighted when she’s offered a lock of seafoam hair to play with. She chews on it, babbling, and squeals again when Tatiana pats her fat, round cheek.

“If someone able to give birth came into the church with those symptoms, I’d tell them they were probably pregnant,” Tatiana replies.

Her friend’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline. “And?”

She pulls her hair away from the baby and waves a hand. “I can’t be. I mean, I’m always careful. And Zeke isn’t home too much anyway, and when he is, he’s waaaay too tired for us to have any fun together.”

“Hmm.” The friend frowns at Tatiana, eyes flickering over her, and then she brandishes a pointer finger. “Let’s see. It always bothered me when my sister did this when I was expecting.”

Tatiana yelps as the finger squishes into a breast, of all the damnable places, and a sore pang echoes in her body. The finger attacks again, poking a little less firmly, but it still hurts. “Stop that!”

“Sore?” she asks.

“Yeah!” Tatiana covers her chest, scandalized and slightly violated. “But anyone’s boobs are gonna feel sore if you go around poking them like that, wacko!”

“I’d give you six weeks tops before you start getting a bump,” the friend says. She sighs and shakes her head, picks up a bundle of freshly-baked flatbreads off the counter, and makes for the door. “Thank you for the bread. I don’t think you’ll be able to stomach that jam for a while, so give it to General Ezekiel.”

Her friend goes, leaving Tatiana alone in her house with an unsettled feeling in her stomach. She feels awkward, then scolds herself for feeling that way, because there’s no possible way she’s pregnant. Sure, she and Zeke had that one time where they got _really_ frisky, and he might have- No, no. She can’t be, and she eats a spoonful of the strawberry jam straight to prove it.

Tatiana vomits it up an hour later.

Another couple of weeks pass, and every time Zeke sees her, he says, “Darling, you look pale. Are you still cold? Still feeling sick?”

He cups her cheek, letting Tatiana lean into his touch. “No.”

It’s a lie.

“I’m so sorry,” Zeke says, and his dark eyes are filled with exhaustion and sadness. “I wish I could be here to care for you, whatever this little sickness is, but you know I’m busy.”

“I know.” She grabs his hand, holding it to her cheek for a while longer. “I know, honey. Thank you.”

It’s admittedly hard being alone, hunched over a basin or a sink for what feels like a majority of the day and crying when she vomits up her lunch. It might be easier if someone was there to care for her, and it’s better when she’s at the church and a brother or sister can hold her hair back for her, but it’s bad when the rumors start spreading. Tatiana digs her heels in the ground, crosses her arms, tosses her head, and stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the fact that she could be pregnant.

And then, about six weeks after the chills started and the nausea kicked in, Tatiana is sobbing in the middle of the night, alone for the tenth night in a row, and bent over a basin that is filled with stomach acid, because she hasn’t been able to eat anything substantial. She’s sobbing, crying, wondering what in the world is happening to her, and that’s when she takes her heels out of the dirt. It hits her like a punch to the jaw that she hasn’t bled in over two months, and she sniffles as she finally comes to accept the fact that they weren’t careful enough.

Zeke comes back in the middle of the night, shockingly enough, the night of the realization. She wakes up and finds that he’s already cleaned the basin, tucked her in properly with an extra quilt, and is sleeping in a chair next to the bed. He looks exhausted even while asleep, evident by a crease to his brow, the way his arms folded. There’s a fussy downturn to his lips, and he looks grouchy. Yet, she realizes that even though he must’ve been bone-tired when he came home, he found her collapsed in a heap on the bed, cleaned up after her, put her to sleep properly, and then slept next to her in a chair the whole night.

She starts crying again, and that’s what wakes him up. Zeke jerks awake, alarmed by the sudden wailing, and reaches for her before before he’s even fully conscious. He shushes her, rubbing her back, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay, dearest, stop crying,” not even asking what the tears are for. In truth, Tatiana doesn’t know exactly what they're for either, but she suspects they’re related to the fact that he’s simply the best man she has ever known, and he’s all hers, or maybe that he’s already tired, and now things are going to be that much harder because they wanted to fuck one night and got way too carried away doing it.

But Tatiana doesn’t tell him. Zeke has to go back to the base around noon, after he’s stumbled through making them both breakfast and lunch, napped on the couch a little, and done some leisurely reading. He says that it honestly probably would’ve been best for him to stay at the base in the first place, but that he’d just needed to come home and see her. He also says that he doesn’t know when he’ll be home next, but he’ll send her letters as always, and he’ll be thinking of her constantly. He gives her a kiss, hugs her closely, and then leaves.

Tatiana is alone in the house again, but now she knows she’s not _really_ alone. She’s got a little friend inside of her, a constant company, no matter if she likes it or not. Kind of awkward, really.

It’s not like Tatiana doesn’t want to be a mother. In fact, the idea fills her with a thrill. She likes children, no matter how terrible they can sometimes seem, and has helped raise many of the kids in the village. She’s midwifed many births. If this were any other time, Tatiana would be thrilled, delighted, over the moon about having a baby. She can picture it in her mind, just how she would tell Zeke, how he would react, and all the fun activities that would come after, like picking some names, making a corner in their room for a crib, all that cookie-cutter stuff.

But, this is war. Rigel and Zofia have been at full-blown war for probably six months now. Last Tatiana checked, the Zofian Deliverance had retaken their castle from Chancellor Desaix. She remembers Zeke nervously telling her that they would be marching on his stronghold further northwest in Zofia, and after that, it would be a straight march to the border, so long as they could get through the swathes of Rigelian and Faithful forces standing in their way.

“They won’t get that far,” Tatiana had said nervously, mostly as an assurance to herself. “I mean, they can’t. They’ll already be tired, and there’ll be so much more fighting to do. They won’t cross the border, right?”

Zeke hadn’t replied for a long, long minute, and then said he could not lie to her and that, if the Zofians could get through the obstacles in their path, they would undoubtedly march on Rigel.

That was about a month ago. She doesn’t know what the news is since then. It’s not like anyone brings the church the news from the front, and nobody wants to talk about it. She only gets her updates when Zeke comes home once or twice within a span of two weeks, and that’s only if she remembers to ask him about it. It’s not like he’s coming home any more frequently, though, and it’s not like he’s working any less, so she suspects that the Zofians are still marching strong, and he’s busy at work formulating strategies and plans for what to do if they cross the border.

If she goes back to that time where they had a romp in the sheets and clearly _something_ happened, it’s been about eight or nine weeks, give or take. On average, a woman her age might start showing anywhere from twelve to sixteen weeks. If this were anytime when food was actually available and she was capable of keeping it down, her extra fat might disguise the bump for a while longer. But, Tatiana has dropped too much weight recently, and as small as she is now coupled with her height, she anticipates she’ll be showing closer to 12 weeks.

She can’t tell him. Gods, Tatiana can’t tell him. Her poor, poor Ezekiel, who is stressed enough already as it is. He has a war to worry about; she recalls a time just a few weeks ago when she’d made a trip to the base, walked into his office, and found all of his walls plastered with maps and notes, his desk cluttered with Zofian strategy books, chalkboards filled with scrawlings and more maps and more notes and more _everything._ He’d looked dead on his feet as he wrote something on a chalkboard, and if he’s gotten even more busy than that, she knows he’s working himself half-to-death.

So, how is she supposed to tell him when he already has enough to deal with? How is Tatiana supposed to sit Zeke down, look him in the eyes, and say, “Surprise, we weren’t careful enough that one time, and now I’m eight weeks pregnant in the middle of the winter during a war. Surprise, we barely have enough to feed ourselves and keep afloat, and now you have to worry about being a father and providing for us when you’re already drowning in stress. Surprise, surprise!”

There’s really no proper way to do that. None that Tatiana can figure out. So, she figures she’ll hide it until she can properly break it to him. A part of her that she knows is silly hopes that somehow, within the next couple of weeks, the war will magically stop and things will go back to normal. She knows that’s silly, though, so she settles for wearing thick sweaters and shawls and long cardigans, high-waisted dresses that billow over her stomach, the like.

“Still cold?” Zeke asks on another visit home. “You are all bundled up, _zvyozdochka moya._ Do you need me to stoke the fire?”

Tatiana is cold, but she’s not drowning in a sweater because of that, so she smiles and shakes her head. He doesn’t suspect anything, and they sleep all bundled up against the winter and don’t do anything more than kiss and cuddle, so she’s safe.

Ten weeks and she still doesn’t have a solution, though. When she gets up in the morning, finishes her time spent hunched over the basin, she looks at herself in their full body mirror. She definitely isn’t showing, but she does have a bit of extra weight on her. Frowning, she puts her hands on her stomach, patting and massaging, and wonders how she can get away with a growing bump in the long term when the time comes to worry about it.

The friend from before stares at her knowingly when she comes to visit next and Tatiana is wearing an oversized sweater and a shawl indoors. She pats her cheek, tells her that the morning sickness gets better soon, and that she can fix it now by eating small meals and napping plenty. She asks how Tatiana plans to tell Zeke, and Tatiana is certain that she goes white, because she back off of that question very quickly.

Zeke comes home again only a week later, and Tatiana is distressed at the fact that the the weight gain is fairly obvious. She wears a high-waisted dress and a buttoned-up cardigan, but she also knows that she can’t hide when most of the roundness is in her face. Her center of balance is also a little off; she’s getting clumsier than normal.

“I don’t mean this in a rude way,” he starts over dinner, “but you have put on a little weight recently. How?”

Tatiana keeps sipping the thin soup in her bowl, but it takes everything in her control to not choke on it. She asks him snidely, “Are you saying I’m fat?,” hoping that the little snip will fluster him enough to shake him off the topic.

Zeke doesn’t shake. He never does. It's because his questions are never rude and they both know it. “I’m just confused. I-it’s not like there’s much to eat. I don’t know how you could be gaining weight.”

“I- I suppose I’m just not exercising much, then,” she lies.

Zeke gives the house a glancing over, undoubtedly noting how spotless it is, and then looks at her with a perched eyebrow. Housekeeping is a definite brand of exercise, and they both know that, but he goes back to quietly eating his meal and drops the topic. He’s still too tired to touch her intimately in the evening, but even when he wraps his arms around her waist and holds her tightly, she worries that he’ll feel a change in her physique.

Eleven weeks have gone by since her suspected conception date now, and the bump is starting just a bit. It’s a little thing, just a tiny swell that should be barely noticeable unless someone really stares hard, but it makes Tatiana feel like she’s the size of a mountain. Every time she leaves the house, she’s certain everyone is staring at her, gossiping about her situation, and she stops hanging around the village to chat. She goes straight from home to the church, then straight from the church to home.

Tatiana also becomes anxious about aspects of her pregnancy more and more. She becomes worried about what might happen if there isn’t enough to eat and she can’t keep her body healthy for the child. She worries about miscarrying in the middle of the night, or perhaps even during the day while she’s going about her business. She worries about the possibility of giving birth much too early, and then both her and the child being so weak that they can’t survive the cold or hardships. There’s a lot to worry about, and it makes her even more nauseous than the morning sickness.

She still doesn’t know what to do about telling her lover, and her panic is reaching a point to where she dreads the days that she sees Zeke coming up the road. The sight of him should only fill her with utter delight, not fear. The anguish makes her more ill, and the sight of her pale in bed concerns him, she knows it. Instead of cuddling up to him like she enjoys, she tells him he should go straight to bed and rest. She can’t cook, because the stench of it makes her more noticeably ill, and she knows he misses home-cooked meals, but he doesn’t question it. He’s too polite.

Tatiana finds herself having a breakdown at least twice a day. Once when she wakes up and looks at herself in the mirror, watching as the shift in her physique becomes undeniable. The other breakdown(s) come randomly at other parts of the day, whenever her hormones decide to swing. She curls up in an empty room, sobbing, and wonders how she is going to put this on sweet, sweet Ezekiel, who already comes home half-dead and eager to sleep and forget his problems, if only for five or so hours.

It all comes to a head when he tries to touch her and she panics.

It’s a simple, quiet evening, and he’s notably exhausted. Cooking doesn’t bother Tatiana much that night, just because she’s lucky for once, and she makes a small something with meat the butcher—whom she suspects knows about her situation— slipped her for free. They eat quietly, but she feels his eyes on her, watching as she idly moves things about her plate and pointedly avoids foods that she normally likes. He doesn’t bring up the weight gain again, even though Tatiana knows that she’s obviously a little rounder.

Ezekiel, the sharpest military mind the imperial emperor has ever seen, not even able to pick up on the slightest hints that she’s carrying his own child. She wishes he would notice and confront her directly. She thinks it would be so much easier if he just said, while stirring his stew around, “I know your secret. You’re pregnant.” It would be so much easier for him to realize it himself instead of her having to dump it on him, because she knows no matter how gently she breaks the news, it still has the possibility of putting too much weight on his shoulders. The straw that broke the pegasus’ back, so to speak.

But he doesn’t say anything.

What Zeke does do, however, is start kissing her neck while they’re relaxing in the living room after dinner. He leans in, slides a hand over the back of the couch, and tilts her head up so he can get at her neck easily. It feels good, undeniably so, and Tatiana forgets herself for a minute as he slowly and carefully pleasures her. It’s nice, because he hasn’t touched her so intimately in a while. She’s missed it. It’s nice. It’s nice.

And then his hand slides down from her neck, down her chest, and close to her stomach.

Tatiana lunges up from the couch, effectively startling him, and ignores the spluttering apologies he offers her—“I’m sorry, I assumed it was fine, I’m so sorry!” She holds herself, trembling, and he stands off the couch as well. He warily reaches for her, like he’s trying to not frighten a wild animal, and recoils when she flinches away from his touch.

“Tatiana!”

He calls after her as she locks herself in the bedroom, lost in a fit of anxiety and panic, and she sits on the bed with her hands over her ears while he knocks on the door politely and says, “Tatiana, tell me what’s wrong. Are you sick? Do you need me to take you to the church? Whatever is the matter?”

She chokes and tucks her head further into her hands. She can’t do this, she can’t do this, she can’t do this, she ca-

“Tatiana!”

She can’t do this _now._ Why couldn’t they have slipped up another time? A safer time?

“Tatiana.” Zeke’s voice takes on a stern, scolding tone. “I _am_ going to break this door down if you don’t come out right now. And you know I can. Please, come out and tell me what the matter is.”

She can’t she can’t she can’t-

“I don’t want to have to replace the door. I don’t have the energy. Just come tell me what’s bothering you, dear.”

Tatiana feels like she can’t tell him, yet she also feels like they can’t spend money on a new door because she’s throwing a tantrum.

Shakily, she gets off the bed. He must hear her, because he stops knocking and speaking. A tremor rips through her as she walks to the door, feeling like it’s looming over her with every step.

What does she say now? Can she keep lying? She can tell him that the sickness has caught up with her and she’s just fussy. Then again, it’s not going to be too long now until she gets too big to hide the bump with sweaters and loose dresses, so maybe she should just go and blurt it out. But, wouldn’t that ruin him? Wouldn’t it worry him, at the very least? Wouldn’t it bother him so badly that he might pack his things and leave? Wouldn’t it-?

She is so lost in her thoughts that she doesn’t realize she’s opened the door.

Zeke looks down at her, his face bewildered and alarmed. He opens his mouth to say something, but winds up stumbling away instead as she blows past him, heading to the living room where there is room to pace and think about this. She has to think a little more about how to hide it. Could she go somewhere? Could she maybe cross the border into Zofia, find a secluded place, and hide there? No, too dramatic. That’s even more worrisome for him than her actual problem.

“Tatiana.”

She doesn’t have anywhere to hide. She feels like a trapped animal, a bird in a cage. She feels like something. Something not good. Something bad. This is all bad.

“Stop pacing a hole in the rug, please.”

Nowhere to go, and she feels her anxiety climbing. Tatiana wishes she hadn’t had that little outburst. Why didn’t she just peacefully brush away his hand and do something like turn the affection back on him? Why did she throw a fit? She knows why. Panic. She hasn’t felt calm in weeks. She knows that that’s probably not good for the baby.

“Now, will you sit down and-”

That makes it worse. She feels panic welling up within her even stronger. Tatiana is simply stuck between a rock and a hard place, and she can’t deny it much longer. There’s a war at their border, a few months of winter ahead of them yet. She’s doing nothing useful by sitting here and having a panic attack, but she doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t know what else she can do. She wishes she had never done anything. Maybe if she hadn’t worn that sort of low-cut dress that night, maybe if he hadn't looked so sweet, maybe-

“Stop!”

Hands press down on her arms suddenly, wrenching her out of her mind and back into her living room. Zeke is squeezing her tightly, so tightly she might bruise, but she knows it isn’t any cruelty or anger. He just looks scared. He looks scared out of his mind, and it’s the first time she’s seen him look so helpless since he woke up without so much as a name.

“Are you dying?” he asks. “Is that it? Is that what all this panic is about? Wh-what, you’ve caught some rare illness and that is what all these symptoms are?”

Tatiana swallows, but also, she almost laughs. “N-no.”

She can see a load fly off his shoulders. “What is this frivolity about then? Did I touch you wrong? You know you can just tell me if you do not want something.”

She presses her lips. “No.”

He looks a little irritated, still a little scared and perplexed. “What _is_ it? I’m too tired for this, Tatiana. No mind games. I’m about ready to fall over and die from work, and pardon my saying, but I don’t need any nonsense at home either.”

A chill goes through her blood. She can’t tell him now. He’s too busy. He’s so busy. He doesn’t have time for anything else, so how could she tell him?

“Tell me,” he says again.

She shakes her head and tries to pull herself away from him.

“Darling,” he implores. “Tatiana. Just tell me what it is that's wrong. It stresses me to know that you’re keeping a secret! Just- just _tell_ me, Tatiana, I beg of you.”

“No,” she says, and then she says it louder and more frantically, squirming in his grip. “No!”

“What’s gotten hold of you?” he asks, squeezing her tighter, and then his voice goes as harsh as she’s ever heard it. “Tatiana, tell me this instant! Now!”

Tatiana’s brief defiance turns into blubbering tears, and she goes limp in his grip instead of fighting him. He shifts his gears just as quickly, pulling her close and hushing her, a hand slowly going up and down her back. She can still feel him trembling, though, undoubtedly shocked from both her outburst and his own harsh tongue.

She sobs harder, accepting that she can’t keep her secret anymore, not with his suspicion this high. So she cries, keeping the secret to herself just a few seconds longer, wailing in his arms. He trembles harder the more tears she sheds, and she hears him start to whisper, “No, no, stop crying, please, please.”

“I’m sorry!” There’s an awful tremble to her voice. She squeezes the cloth of his shirt tighter in her hands, sniffling and trying to hold back tears, but she chokes and breaks right back down into hysterics. “I’m so sorry!”

“What happened?” he asks quietly. “What happened, my shining sun?”

She feels too acutely aware of her body, particularly the heaviness in her belly. Her knees give out without warning, but he catches her easily and holds her upright. She cries, cries, keeps crying, and then blubbers out quietly, “I’m pregnant. I’m sorry.”

Zeke is quiet. Even his shushing and desperate murmuring stops. His grip on her, though, tightens.

“I’m so sorry,” she weeps. “I didn’t mean to!”

“Do not cry,” he whispers after a long moment. “Stop, stop crying, my love. Darling, my angel, my reason.”

“No,” she whispers against him. “Don’t! Don’t call me-!”

“Don’t apologize. Don't feel guilty. You did naught wrong.” Zeke tightens his grip on her and pulls her to his chest. “Shhhhh. We’re going to sit down, okay? I am going to brew tea. Do you want that?”

Tatiana wails louder, and she feels him flinch. He just wraps an arm around her shoulders, however, holding one of her hands, and carefully guides her over to the couch. He keeps murmuring in a dazed, distant voice, “Sit down, sit down, do not cry,” all the way to the point where he eases her down into the seat. Her face feels like a mess of a running nose and pathetic tears, but he still leans over her kindly, a soft look on his face, and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket. He blots at her cheeks and the corners of her eyes, then presses the crumpled cloth into her hands before he goes to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs again, over and over, but each time she says it, she feels herself getting calmer. Not because she wants to be calm, necessarily, and calm may actually be the wrong word. She feels tired. After crying so viciously, even if only for a couple of minutes, she shouldn’t be surprised that she feels numb and limp, only able to whisper more apologies.

“Can you drink tea?” Zeke asks from the stove. “Does it make you ill?”

“It’s fine,” she says in a harsh voice, and then she sniffles a little more.

“I am just making sure,” he replies evenly.

A few minutes pass where the water boils and the tea steeps, and then he comes and brings her a mug. With sore eyes, Tatiana looks up from the ground to his face, finding not a trace of anger or panic, but only exhaustion. He holds out the mug to her a little more insistently, and when she takes it in weak fingers, he collapses in his chair near the fire. She watches him quietly, slowly sipping at the tea, and waits for him to say something.

“How long?” Zeke asks finally. She notices he doesn’t have a cup of tea himself. She wonders if his stomach is turning too badly to drink, though she does anticipate he’ll break into that stash of whiskey she knows he has in the closet later in the evening. “Do you think it was that time, during the storm-?”

Tatiana looks at the ground. “Yes.”

He crosses his legs, one over his knee. “Mmm. I knew I had gotten carried away, but we always think the one little slip-up we make will not affect us.”

She doesn’t reply. The tea is a little watery. He must’ve been too dazed to steep it properly.

He uncrosses his legs, then crosses him again, and she can see his arms move in a way that suggest he’s buried his face in a hand, even though she still won’t look at him. She hears a hiss of breath from between his teeth, an angry, quiet, _“Shit,”_ and then there’s only more silence.

All of Tatiana’s friends who are parents always talk about what a happy occasion it was to announce their pregnancy. They did it over family dinners, or surprised their spouses with it when they came home, something or other, something mushy and happy. When Tatiana had dared to imagine what her own announcement would be like, she hadn’t anticipated anything like this. The middle of a war-torn winter, her lover a general running on four hours of sleep over the course of two days. She didn’t anticipate this at all.

A deep breath comes from Zeke. He keeps his legs crossed and lowers his hands, setting them politely in his lap. He says, “Look at me, Tatiana,” and his voice is too even and composed, like he’s conducting a meeting or something. She doesn’t dare look up at him for a good thirty seconds or so, and then she does. She slowly looks up from his legs to his chest, then up his neck, and then to his face.

Tatiana’s heart stops when she realizes he doesn’t look mad. He looks sad. A bit sheepish, even.

“I am sorry,” he says.

Her grip on the tea mug tightens. “What for?”

“Well, you apologized, so I supposed I should as well. This is a situation that takes two, after all. Or-“ His lips turn up in a wry, empty smile. “Do you think you impregnated yourself, Tatiana?”

She flushes and looks down into her lap. Perhaps soon she won’t be able to do that anymore. She’ll look down and just see her stomach. It feels surreal to think about. Not quite true. Perplexing, almost. She doesn’t know how she feels about that. She feels like she’s stuck in some sort of limbo where she’s not feeling anything but anxiety and fear. She wishes she felt a little happier.

“Okay.” Zeke puts his face back in a hand and squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Alright. We can handle this.”

Tatiana takes a sip of her tea. She wants to say something like, “Do you really think so?” Yet, she keeps the comment to herself.

“We can handle this,” he mumbles again. “'Tis not going to be easy, but we can handle it.”

He sounds so worn and tired. Not at all like he’s prepared for something like this. Not at all like he really can handle it. She knows that he’s putting on a brave face for her, trying to be reassuring, but Tatiana has known that this was all going to be a disaster from the second she admitted the truth to herself. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be fun, and it might not turn out at all. It’s not a fairy tale by any means.

“I fear you will have the hardest time of it,” Zeke continues. “Forgive me.”

He sounds so apologetic that it twists her heart and then rips it right in half. Her hands squeeze the mug once more; she puts it aside. Her entire body feels weak in the wake of her breakdown. Her legs tremble when she puts weight on them, but her knees don’t give out, and she’s thankful for at least that. He looks so pensive and distant, not even paying her any heed as she makes her way over to his chair.

“It’ll be hard,” Tatiana admits, and that gets his attention. “It’ll definitely be really hard. And it might not even work out.”

Zeke flinches. “Do not make me consider that.”

“It’s a possibility you and I both need to consider,” she says sternly. “It might not work out. There might not be enough food, or something else could go wrong, and I could miscarry. I could give birth too early, and then-”

“One thing at a time, Tatiana,” he implores. “Just one thing at a time. I will consider the worst-case scenarios later. For now, can you let me soak in just the one thing?”

She presses her lips and looks away. “I’m sorry. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

“You’ve known how long?”

“Maybe six weeks, I think.”

“That would explain the peculiar behavior,” he muses. “The sickness, the fidgeting. I thought you were distant, but I was too busy to ask why. I must’ve seemed so inconsiderate, so uncaring towards you.”

“It wasn’t inconsiderate.” Tatiana thinks about reaching out to touch him, but she still feels too shaky. “I kept it a secret this long because I know you’re busy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put something else on your plate. I know you don’t have the time to deal with a problem like this.”

“I do not want you to call it a problem,” he insists. “It’s not a problem. It’s just something difficult.”

She smiles humorlessly. “Isn’t that the definition of a problem?”

Zeke sighs, sits up in his chair, and holds his hand out to her. Hesitantly, she reaches for it, and he seems slightly saddened the longer it takes her to hold him. The heaviness in his eyes convinces her to stop being a coward. She moves forward, squeezing his hand with sudden urgency, and tries to not let tears spring to her eyes as he squeezes her back. He urges her forward with gentle pulling and a quiet, “Come here, come here.” He guides her closer to him slowly, and eventually, pulls her to sit in his lap.

“Do not be afraid.” Zeke holds the side of her head and leans her towards him, pressing a kiss to her hair. He feels warm and reassuring, and she can feel his heartbeat strong in his chest when she leans against him. Gradually, she starts to feel calmer, more steady.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I don’t want you to worry about this. I’ll handle it on my own, and you can just keep working the same as normal.”

“That’s hardly fair,” he says. He sighs and takes her hand, pulling it up to rest on his cheek. “I have to do something. I could never live with myself if I left you here alone to fend for yourself while I locked myself away in my office.”

“But that’s just how it has to be,” Tatiana protests. “It’s not that you don’t care. It’s just that that’s the situation we're all in right now.”

“I do not care if that is the situation,” he says. “I am not going to be able to do everything I want to, but I am going to do what I can. I’ll find extra food somewhere. Even if it’s only for a couple hours at a time, I will come home more. Most of our money will go towards food, but we can afford to set a few spare coins aside here and there for other things you will need.”

She sighs and leans against him more, resting her head on his shoulder and breathing in his scent. The proximity to him makes her feel calmer. She can hardly believe she was having a complete panic attack five minutes ago. He still has her hand on his cheek, eyes shut, and looks a little more at peace himself.

“I wish this was happier news,” she says quietly.

Zeke opens his eyes and glances at her. He may look a little more peaceful, but there is still such an intense guilt in his eyes. A flicker of shame. A hint of fear.

Tatiana has never seen that kind of look on him before.

“Things don’t always go the way you want them to,” is his reply.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like Zeke, i too need a drink,

The very first thing that Zeke starts thinking about is how he’s going to bring more food home. He wonders what he’ll have to work in order to get paid enough to feed Tatiana when she needs to start eating more than normal. After that, he starts wondering how he’ll manage those sorts of hours while trying to come home to her frequently. Then, he starts thinking about how they’ll get her maternity clothes, a more comfortable chair, things like that.

He’s thinking about all that, his mind racing a million miles a minute, and it’s barely been ten minutes. Tatiana is still in his lap, draped over him. He can feel her still trembling. Of course, he feels bad to have raised his voice and frightened her, but in the heat of the moment, what else was he supposed to do? Never has he seen her act so hysterical and panicked. It’s not something he’s ever had to deal with, so he snapped, and he’s not proud of it. He'd truly thought she was dying.

Zeke keeps thinking about everything he needs to do now. He holds Tatiana against him, rubbing her back slowly while he stares into the fire, and tries to figure out a schedule and finances. Money and time are two things he desperately needs, and while money isn’t necessarily extremely tight at the moment, time is a rare commodity of the highest luxury right now. Nobody has any time, least of all him.

Tatiana is dozing now. The rise and fall of her shoulders is slight and rhythmic, and she murmurs sleepily when he shifts in the chair. He gets up carefully, an arm tucked underneath her knees and one wrapped around her shoulders, and she blinks up at him as if she’s confused.

“It’s time for bed,” he tells her. “I think you have had a long few weeks with all this worrying. I want you to sleep for a long, long time, okay?”

She looks a little guilty, but doesn’t argue with him. She mumbles, leans her head on his chest, and keeps on dozing as he carries her back to the bedroom. Normally, she would protest that she can, in fact, walk on her own, or perhaps giggle and kiss him if she were in a more flirtatious mood, but she’s just limp and tired. It pains him to see her so lifeless. It pains him to know that she’s this way because he made her feel that she had to hold such a heavy secret for so long. He has to do better for her.

Carefully, gently, Zeke lays her down in their bed. She sighs as her head hits the pillows, like she hasn’t slept in so long. He takes the quilt from the foot of the bed and drapes it over her, making sure she’s covered properly. Tatiana grabs the edge and pulls it up over her shoulder, snuggling against the mattress, and he smiles fondly at her. Her skin is warm and smooth when he rests a hand against her cheek; lightly, he brushes his hand over her face, tugging her bangs out of her eyes and stroking her jaw.

“Comfortable?” he asks quietly.

Tatiana opens her eyes a little and stares up at him, the nods and shuts them. Once more, she says, “I’m sorry,” and once more, he says, “It’s not your fault at all.”

A little more stroking, a few more hushed murmurs of, “It’s all right, everything is going to be fine. It will all seem better in the morn, Tatiana,” and she’s asleep. She doesn’t move when he takes his hand away, and the rise and fall of her chest indicates a rather deep slumber. It’s what she deserves, and he has no plans at all of bothering her.

He needs a drink, anyway.

Zeke doesn’t really know when he was planning on drinking the jug of whiskey he’s been keeping stashed away in the closet, but now seems as good a time as any. He can’t remember the last time he got drunk, and, again, now seems as good a time as any. So, he gets the bottle out, considers not even bothering with a glass, but then decides on one anyway.

He gets the glass from the cabinet, some paper and a quill from a drawer, and sits at the kitchen table. The whiskey burns comfortingly when it goes down; he holds the glass in a hand while he scrawls a schedule and different numbers and memos down with the other. It settles like a fire in his stomach, and before Zeke knows it, he’s had one glass, then two, then four, and then most of the bottle is gone.

He’s still writing, though. He’s trying to plan out schedules and events, how he can get away with coming home for a little while every couple of days while still completing his work. He tries to make a budget for food each week, then starts to scrawl out how much he gets in rations every day at the military base and how he can factor those into her meals. He pauses, pours another glass of whiskey, and knocks it back before scribbling down different things that he’ll inevitably need to buy.

It’s when he’s going back to trying to figure out his hours that a thought comes to him through the haze of his alcohol-muddled mind: Jerome cannot know about this.

Jerome, of all the damned people in the world, absolutely cannot know about this. If he finds out about this at all, Zeke knows that this opens up entire avenues of mockery and torment. He can just hear the string of torments now, echoing in his brain (“Not even married and you couldn’t keep your hands off of her? How ungentlemanly!” is but one taunt that he can hear in Jerome’s nasally voice), and doesn’t find himself fond of them.

He keeps writing down everything he can think of, downs the rest of the whiskey, and falls asleep with his quill still in hand.

* * *

Zeke wakes up to hands on his shoulders and blearily blinks sleep out of his eyes. Immediately, he grimaces at the winter sunlight hitting him, aggravating the all-consuming pound in his head. He sits up regardless, reaches for the hand on his right shoulder, and squeezes it as he peers up at Tatiana.

She looks a little better. More well-rested, with a bit more color in her skin. It fills him with relief to see the lack of bags under her eyes, and it delights him to know that a weight has clearly flown clean off her shoulders. She looks a little more put-together as well, with her hair piled on the top of her head neatly, a nice dress on, and a shawl draped over her shoulders. Tatiana looks almost completely different from the panicked, sobbing, terrified girl last night; she most definitely looks more like herself again.

“Good morning,” he mumbles, kissing her hand. “You look better.”

She smiles happily, then frowns as she cups his face, not even smiling again when he nuzzles her. “It’s noon.”

Zeke stands so fast, ripping himself out of her grip, that his partner squeaks and recoils. The empty whiskey jug wobbles and tips over, rolling around the table. His heart is pounding in his ears, and he can already hear the shouting match he’s going to get into with Jerome for being so completely late for work. Stumbling, he rushes for the door, grabbing his coat off the hook and trying to shove his arms into the uniform. If it’s noon, he should have been at work six whole hours ago, and he had reports to write and battle strategies to make and soldiers to train, and-

“Stop that fussing!” Tatiana comes to him and puts her hands on his chest, like she’s trying to hold his beating heart and calm it. “I woke up early. I knew you had that whole jug of whiskey, and I knew you were tired besides, so I penned a letter to General Jerome and had someone take it to the base. I told him you were extremely ill and unable to get out of bed, and I wasn’t allowing you to leave.”

Zeke stares down at her, blinking, then groans and crumples, almost. He stops trying to frantically shove himself into his uniform, lets his shoulders and head hang, and leans against Tatiana so heavily that she nearly topples. His heart is still hammering, but his body is screaming with relief; he hasn’t had a day off in months, since this damnable war started, and he wonders what he should do. Sleep, sleep, sleep until he can’t sleep anymore, probably.

“I didn’t really like his reply.” Tatiana huffs, reaches into the pocket of her apron, and pulls out a crumply, folded piece of paper. Obviously angry, she shoves it towards him, then crosses her arms and puffs out her cheeks in indignation. The action is so like regular-Tatiana, a little childish and pure, that it brings a smile to his face.

The letter immediately swipes it away. Zeke grimaces at the unnecessarily long drivel it contains, the passive-aggressive remarks and sharp words that he can read in Jerome’s gods-awful drawl. He gets to a particular point in the letter where he has penned, “It’s your job as his woman to keep him healthy and mind the house, but you have no place to keep him away from his duty-” and he crumples up the letter. Tatiana watches as he crosses the room to the hearth, rips the note in quarters, and feeds it to the flames.

“I like keeping the house and caring for you,” Tatiana remarks, then looks bitter. “Until someone tells me it’s my job, that is.”

“He’s just a sexist,” Zeke assures. “But at least he did not send someone to fetch me and drag me there.”

“I wish he'd come to try,” she counters as she balls up her fists. “I dare him to come and refer to me as your property to my face. I’ll whack ‘im right where it hurts!”

He smiles fondly at her as he takes the poker and stirs the flames. He notices the scent of something cooking then and looks to the stove, where a pot is sitting over a flame. Tatiana looks over at it, appearing almost sheepish.

“I wanted to cook you something nice for your first day off in months,” she explains, “but all I could manage was a plov. We only had some rice and a bit of meat. It’s barely enough for more than a serving.”

The worries of last night hit him like a raging horse as soon as she brings up the lack of food. He frowns, turns over one more log, and then puts the poker to the side again. Tatiana watches him, radiating anxiety, but doesn’t speak.

“Are you going to be able to keep that down?” Zeke asks. “There’s no point in wasting food.”

Tatiana looks indignant, then sighs. “My nausea has been going away lately. I didn’t season it heavily, so it should be fine. But you should eat-”

“I want you to eat it all,” he insists. “You need it more.”

“But-!” In an anxious motion, she grabs her shawl and pulls it closer to her shoulders. “But you aren’t getting your military rations today, so you need to eat it more.”

“I can go hungry for a day,” he argues, but he already feels his stomach growling. It’s not as though he gets to eat like a king on the salted meat and two-day-old bread he gets at work. Tatiana looks distressed besides, so he relents, “I’ll have a little. A few bites. Will that ease you?”

She sighs, nods, and shifts awkwardly on her feet before going to the stove. Zeke tries to listen to the sound of her working, because it always relaxes him, fills him with some homey feeling that puts all the muscles in his body at ease. All he can focus on, though, is the feeling of his gut sinking and turning. He’s happy he’s convinced Tatiana to eat most of the food, because he doesn’t know if he’d be able to keep it down with the way his stomach feels.

He watches as she hovers over the stove, curious as she stands still. She has a bowl in one hand, a wooden spoon lingering over the pot in the other, and she’s staring down at the food. He wonders why she isn’t spooning the plov into the bowl, and is then mortified to see a flush in her cheeks and a shine of tears in her eyes.

“I can’t do it.” Her voice is tight and thick, but stronger as she puts the items down. “I can’t do it! Y-you have to- I can’t do it, I’m sorry.”

Zeke is baffled for a moment as he wonders what in the world she means, and then his heart melts into a big puddle of adoration as he realizes: Tatiana physically can’t bring herself to give him less than her.

By Duma himself, Zeke is _madly_ in love with her.

“I will do it,” he assures gently. “Sit down. I will do it for you.”

Tatiana retreats, sniffling and rubbing her eyes, too ashamed to look at him as he brushes past her. A soft cry escapes her as she sits at the table, and it wrenches his heart to hear it. He figures she’ll cry harder out of embarrassment (and what he assumes is a hormonal imbalance) if he looks at her now, so he doesn’t. He picks up the spoon and the bowl, stares into the pot, and finds that she didn’t exaggerate. What it contains is a meager amount of rice and meat and vegetables, barely more than a single serving.

“I’m sorry I’m crying,” Zeke hears her mumble. “I’m really sorry. It’s just happening.”

Chewing the inside of his cheek, he wonders how much he can allow himself; she needs as much as she can get—which is all of it, realistically—but if he gives himself no more than a scoop, it might send her careening back into panic and tears. And so, very reluctantly, he serves himself a few scoops, but makes them small, so as to try and trick her into thinking he’s giving himself more than he is. He spoons the rest of it into another bowl for her, tries to not scowl at the small amount there is, and serves it.

Tatiana looks up from her hands at the bowl he holds out to her, then up into his face, and then back. The poor thing's hands are trembling as she takes it, and she can barely hold the spoon. He waits, watches, holding his breath as he watches her take a bite. She takes another almost instantly, and he feels relieved enough to help himself to his own few mouthfuls.

They eat quietly, if only because Zeke finishes in the matter of a minute and is waiting for her to finish her own portion. Some of the exhaustion from last night is back in her eyes, in the way she sits, and it worries him. He’s really no medical professional, not like her, but he’s well-aware from stories that stress and other negative emotions aren’t good for pregnancies. An overabundance, he hears, can cause a miscarriage or an early birth.

The thought of that terrifies him more than their actual situation.

“Should we discuss this factually, now that things are a little more calm?” he asks. “I was up last night making some notes. If we can budget properly, and-”

“Always so logical,” Tatiana murmurs. She sets her bowl down, letting him peer over to check that she has finished the whole meal. “Aren’t you still scared?”

Still scared? Gods, just thinking about what this is going to put them—put _her—_ through is already tying a knot in his stomach. It makes him want to break out in a sweat and pull at his hair and crawl under a rock and never, ever, _ever_ come out.

“I am only worried,” he lies. “Like I told you last night, this is going to be worst of all for you. I am not the one actually sharing my body with a growing person for, what, another seven months, a little less? That is a long time, Tatiana, and forgive me for saying, but you are not the strongest of the gods’ creations.”

“I can hold my own,” she protests. “I mean, I got past all that awful morning sickness stuff, and the chills, and the light-headedness. I’ll be fine.”

“I think it’s supposed to get worse, darling, not better. I believe you are still in for quite the ride.” Zeke reaches over and picks up her bowl, checking once more that she’s eaten it all, and stacks it in his own to take over to the kitchen counter. “And you are going to need more to eat if we don’t want you weakening. You are supposed to put on weight during pregnancy, not lose it, correct?”

He hears her hum. “Yeah. I mean, I’m gaining a little, but I think it’s all just from the- Oh, well, you know.” Tatiana clears her throat. “The baby?”

The word makes him flush; he can’t believe he did _this_ to her. He can’t believe he got—to put it bluntly—horny one night, didn’t keep himself in line, and actually… made something. It’s embarrassing. An irreversible error. He wishes he could go back in time, take his past self, and dunk him into a freezing cold bath. He'd known that they were going to have kids someday, and that they were excitedly looking forward to it, but they weren’t really planning on it being _now._

“Zeke?”

“Yes?”

Tatiana stays quiet for another moment, and then- “The war.”

Zeke braces his hands on the counter, looking out the window, waiting while she gets past her hesitation.

“What’s it like right now?”

Recently, he saw one of the best generals in the country shipped back to the capital and to his husband in a bodybag, that’s how it’s going. He’s heard that the Deliverance are making plans to knock on Desaix’s door soon; too soon. In fact, maybe by this point, they’ve already stormed the stronghold and murdered the chancellor. Maybe by now, they’re on a warpath towards their border. But, maybe, the winter is slowing them down. Maybe they’ll run into trouble. Maybe-

“That long pause tells me nothing good,” Tatiana mumbles. He looks back at her, saddened by the weight on her shoulders. “Are we- Are we gonna make it? If the winter and the starvation don’t get to us, are the Zofians going to kill us?”

The thought of Tatiana, skewered on the end of a filthy Deliverance soldier’s lance, shocks him straight down to his core and burns him. He scowls and grips the edge of the counter, squeezing it to try and relieve the tension in his body.

“I’m sorry,” she says instantly. “That was crass of me to say. I’m sure we won’t- I’m sure the Zofians aren’t as bad as everyone says they are.”

If the Zofians weren’t bad, their late king wouldn’t have been such a rotten bastard. If the Zofians weren’t bad, they would’ve stopped at retaking their capital and driving out Desaix. If the Zofians weren’t bad, they wouldn’t be coming closer and closer to their borders.

But he doesn’t say any of this to Tatiana.

“I am sure it will be fine,” he assures as he releases the counter. His fingers sting as the blood rushes back into them. “Let us not think about the war. Let us focus on getting through the winter. We are going to budget carefully, and I am going to work as hard as I can to bring home more money. You are going to need things besides just food."

Tatiana snaps her head up from its bowed position, staring at him with a shine in her eyes. “Don’t you dare starve yourself for me!”

He wonders exactly how she knows what he was planning on doing. “I am not going to starve myself for you, Tatiana, I promise. I get plenty of rations at the base; bringing you home one of my meals per day will not hurt me much, I swear it.”

It will. It likely will. But the heaviest of the winter is only another three months at most, and then there is simply the lingering of it to deal with. The soil will yield food as soon as it starts to warm up, though. Perhaps not a lot, especially if the war is still raging, but enough to stave off starvation for most. So, he just has to hold out for a few months longer, and he can do that. He knows he can do that for Tatiana.

For Tatiana and the child.

“You promise?” Her hands are wringing together, the way they always do when she’s anxious. “You really, really, really promise? Because you’re working so much harder than me, and I know you need all the energy you can get. You work most of the day, every day! You can’t-”

“I promise,” Zeke lies. He’s sure he’s been through worse. The scars on his skin and marring of his flesh suggest that much. “What else will you need?”

“Clothes,” she says immediately, as though she was simply waiting for him to ask. “I would ask to borrow some from my friends who’ve had kids, but, well, I don’t know if they’d fit.” Teasingly despite the situation, she pulls at the collar of her dress. “Tight in the chest, you know.”

He rolls his eyes. “Well, I will see what I can do about putting aside some money for clothing, or at least fabric to make it.”

They’re quiet for a minute, and then she says, “That’s all we should worry about for now. I’m going to start showing soon, so clothing is really the only thing at the moment.”

“Alright.”

More quiet. There isn’t really a lot to say. Zeke feels exhaustion weighing his shoulders down, even though he just slept for what was probably twelve hours. He’s already filled with irritation over having to go into work tomorrow. He just wants to stay home. He wishes somebody would pause this war for one goddamn week so everyone can go home and sleep, and then they can get back to slaughtering each other once they’re nice and well-rested.

“You should rest today.” Tatiana gets up from the table and moves to the counter next to him. She looks up, staring at him from beneath those thick lashes, and then busies herself with the dishes. “I think you’re going to need it.”

Zeke agrees.

* * *

When Tatiana tells her friends that she’s expecting, there’s really no clamor or excitement. If anything, there’s a bit of pity that emanates from them. They offer what help they can: clothes (which mostly are, as expected, a bit small in the chest), a few jars of preserved foods all-in-all, an assurance that she can come to them whenever she needs. It’s all very nice, but she knows that they—and everyone in the village, really—are pitying her.

_Poor Tatiana, always so unlucky, always with the worst timing._

She feels more relaxed now, though. Her pregnancy is out in the open, and she’s no longer fretting constantly about how to hide it or what to tell people. Just that burden off her shoulders makes her feel so much better, and she feels well-rested and at ease for the first time in weeks. Clearly, she’s still worried about other things, like how they’re going to eat, and how she’s going to get what she needs, and how this is going to affect Ezekiel, but still. She feels better. Tatiana has always hated keeping secrets.

Zeke tries to come home frequently, she knows. At least every two days, he comes home, even if it’s only briefly. This time, he comes back exhausted, but somewhat triumphant with a handful of coins that he puts in her palm like they’re Rigel’s greatest treasure.

“Go into town,” he tells her. “Have someone take you. This should be enough for a dress and a cut of meat.”

Tatiana bites her lip as he fumbles with his coat. “You didn’t take any breaks while you were at work, did you? That’s how you got paid this much.”

The answer is obvious in the bags hanging under his eyes. Her poor, sweet, beloved Ezekiel, so ashen-skinned, so tired right down to the marrow of his bones. He knows the answer is obvious, so he doesn’t reply. He drifts past her, takes a seat by the fireplace, and shuts his eyes. She waits for him to open them, but he doesn’t. Hours pass, he doesn’t wake up, and all she can do is cover him with a quilt and kiss his forehead.

She sleeps on the couch, hoping to catch him before he leaves for work again, but he doesn’t wake her up. When the sunlight hits her eyes and she hears the waves on the shore, she’s in their bed. He must have scooped her up and tucked her in properly, all without her so much as stirring, before he left.

There’s nothing to do about it, no matter how regretful she is that she couldn’t see him off. Tatiana takes the silver marks he left her, catches a ride into town, buys a maternity dress from the seamstress, and then some fabric to start making her own with. The shopgirl congratulates her, but there’s a little furrow to her brow and doubt in her eyes that tells Tatiana that, really, she’s wondering what idiot would get pregnant in these times. Tatiana can't fault her for wondering that, not really.

Two weeks pass and Tatiana is glad she bought the dress. When she gets out of bed one time to get some water, so early that the moon is still up and Zeke is still asleep next to her, she looks down and notices that there’s a definite swell to her belly.

It’s surreal. She sits there, legs hanging over the edge of the bed for a moment, hands nervously hovering over her own body. She’s confused and baffled, almost, at the fact that it seems like she went to sleep with the same body as always, and now she’s woken up and it has a definite physical change. It’s very obvious that there’s something in there, and the thought both terrifies and excites her.

“Is it cozy in there?” Tatiana pokes her belly, curious at the feeling. A little hard on the top, mostly soft. She’s tended to over a dozen pregnant women during her career as a cleric, but it feels so different to be on the other end of things. She pokes her belly again, muttering, “I hope it’s cozy. You’ve gotta be in there a while, don’t you? Guess you better make yourself at home.”

A sudden, startled sound indicates that Zeke has woken up; she feels a little bad until she remembers that this is about the time he has to get ready for work anyway, at the most ungodly hours of the morning just before 4AM. He still looks disgruntled and irritated to be awake though, when she looks over her shoulder at him. He’s waking up slowly, mumbling and running his fingers through his hair, and then he looks at her with barely-focused eyes.

“Why are you awake?” he asks through thick after-sleep. “You need to sleep.”

She's forgotten all about getting her water. Tatiana puts her hands firmly on her belly, swings her legs back on the bed, and looks at him. “Look at this.”

Zeke mumbles and rubs his eyes free of sleep, then regards her more closely. “What?”

“Look.”

“I am-” He pauses, peers a little closer, and then lifts a brow. “Well. Look at that. You’re starting to show a little, aren’t you?”

She scoots closer to him. “Isn’t that kinda weird?”

Zeke keeps staring at her belly, appearing plenty awake now. “How so?”

“There’s, like… Something in there, you know?” Almost hesitantly, she runs a hand over her stomach. “I think it’s sort of weird to think about.”

“Mmm.” Zeke leans back against the pillows, reaches over, and puts his hand over her own two. It’s large enough that it nearly envelops both of her hands, warm and scarred, spotted with callouses from leather reins and lance shafts. She thinks there could never be a more comforting hand in the world than his.

“It’s so weird,” she repeats. “It’s going to get bigger, and fast.”

“Mmmm.”

“Do you think that’ll be uncomfortable?”

He shuts his eyes and keeps rubbing her stomach. “Yes, unfortunately. Come closer.”

Tatiana thinks he looks primed to fall right back asleep. “I shouldn’t-”

“Come closer,” Zeke urges again. He opens his eyes and looks at her, and she can’t stand it. She can’t resist those beautiful, dark, soulful eyes, that warm yet sleepy gaze that warms her right down to her toes. “I’ll help you get back to sleep before I go.”

“But, work-”

“I’m not going to fall back asleep. I’m just making sure you’re asleep before I leave. Besides.” He pats her belly a little. “I wish to make myself a little more acquainted with our new friend.”

Tatiana smiles and figures that, if he’s really not going to fall back asleep, there’s no harm in snuggling up to him a little and letting him ease her back into rest. So, she lies down, puts her head on the pillows, and lets Zeke sling an arm over her. He reaches over to play with her hair, stroke her cheeks, occasionally pat her belly, and before she knows it, she’s back to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, sorry, depression kicked me in my metaphorical nuts....... also work has been extremely busy, and is only going to get worse until November, so i really am trying to write as much as i can now, so i have material for consistent updates through the busy season at the office. i've actually got a good chunk of material i've written ahead for on this fic, since i had an idea and just kinda. wrote it all down asd;lfa
> 
> ANYWAY thanks for being patient, i'm glad people like this fic!! i know it's like, corny, but im indulging myself

Zeke went back to sleep.

He didn’t mean to. He’d been lulling Tatiana back to sleep, trying to make sure she got her rest, and then… Well, he supposes that he put his own head back on the pillow when he shouldn’t have, and that had been that. He’s been so sleep-deprived that he should have known better than to rest. He should’ve just gotten up and let her go back to sleep on her own.

Now, he’s staring out the window with something bordering helplessness, mortified at the sight of the sun in the sky. It’s not too high; it’s not noon. A frantic look at the clock says 8AM,  which isn’t bad, but it’s a good four hours after when he was supposed to leave.

What is Jerome going to do to him? He can’t afford to lose any pay or any rations.

“Gods,” he mumbles, all but throwing himself out of bed. Tatiana shifts and mumbles as the action tosses the quilt off of her. He damns himself and slides it back over her shoulders, makes sure she’s covered and warm, and then shakily gets into his uniform.

He’s not quiet enough. Tatiana stirs, blinking, and looks at him blearily while rubbing at an eye. In a thick voice, she mumbles, “Honey, what are you-?”

“I fell back asleep,” he explains shortly. His fingers tremble as he tries to lace up his boots. “I am two hours late now, and by the time I get there, I will be four hours late. That’s nearly a third of a day of pay, Tatiana, and a third of a day of pay can buy a small bag of flour, which can feed you for two days. And-”

“Calm down!” She sits up in bed, anxiously watching him. “It’ll be fine. It’s only a few hours.”

“A few hours that the _beast_ gets to hold over my head,” he grumbles. “I have to go. I won’t be coming home for a few days. I have to make up for this.”

“But-!” He can practically hear her bite her tongue the very second she starts a complaint. He looks at her in the mirror as he fixes his hair quickly, and she looks so sad and pale, staring at him with clear displeasure on her face, but also with a look of understanding. She knows. She knows as well as he does what sacrifices must be made.

“I am sorry.” He moves back towards the bed, leans down, and lets her smooth out the creases in his coat and fix his collar. “I love you. I will try to be back as soon as possible, my sweet.”

“I’m begging you to not overwork yourself,” Tatiana implores. “Gods, Ezekiel, _please,_ not for me.”

What else is there to work for, though?

* * *

Zeke gets to the military base in one hour and twenty minutes, but feels bad for pushing his horse so hard the entire trip. He hands him over to a stablehand, instructs him to give the horse special treatment and a few sugar cubes, and then rushes inside.

His hair is mussed, his cravat askew, and he anxiously brushes and pulls at both as he makes his way down the halls. He knows that people stare at him; this is not the calm and composed General Ezekiel that they know. This is a man running on but a few hours of sleep at most, speed-walking down the hallway with his shoulders slightly hunched while he tries to fix himself. This isn’t Ezekiel, who throws his shoulders back and walks with a grace and purpose. Zeke doesn’t know what he looks like now. A mess, probably. He just hopes he can slide into his office before-

_“Ezekiel!!”_

Before that.

He stops dead in his tracks and stands up straight, arms behind his back, heels pushed together in picture-perfect form. He tilts his head up and locks his jaw, staring straight ahead as soldiers pass by and gaze at him with pity. From behind comes the sound of heeled boots clicking against the stone floors, the swish of a cape, and he knows from the sudden mucky aura in the hallway that _His Majesty_ has arrived.

Zeke takes a deep breath as Jerome takes his place in front of him, lip curled and mustache twitching as he scrutinizes him closely. He doesn’t make direct eye contact with his commander, instead staring at a spot just beyond his head. Zeke considers most eye contact to be polite, but Jerome bristles like a hostile dog when anyone he doesn’t like looks right at him.

“You’re _late,”_ comes dripping from his mouth. “Late! When there’s so much to do! You’re a slob, Ezekiel.”

At the word slob, Zeke unconsciously reaches up to touch his jawline. With a grimace, he realizes that, alongside his tardiness, he has stubble to make him look slovenly. Despite this, he refuses to be cowed by a brute, and he puts his arm back behind his waist. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He can’t bumble about with an excuse like he was easing his lover back to sleep.

Jerome still doesn’t know. Nobody in the army knows, except for one or two lieutenants that he trusts implicitly. It’s been weeks, and he still fears what could happen if he finds out. The sorts of things he could hold over his head… it all makes Zeke shudder to think of.

“Apologies, sir,” he replies. “It was- I cannot deny the fact that I made a mistake and slept in. So forgive me. It will not happen again.”

Jerome scowls and steps forward closer with a snarl. “Just get to your office and get to work. I’m scratching this hour off your pay, Ezekiel, just for that lousy apology.”

“What?” He drops his stance and stares down at Jerome in bewilderment. “No!”

Jerome’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline. A few people pause to stop and stare, shocked at Zeke’s guts. Zeke himself feels regretful for opening his mouth, but an hour of pay, gone, when it could feed Tatiana and the baby even just a _little._

“‘No?’” Jerome echoes. “Don’t make me scratch two hours off your pay, Ezekiel. You lousy little rat!”

“I am sorry,” he says instantly. “I- I deserve it. Please, remove the hour! My sloppy behavior is inexcusable and- and clear evidence of my shortcomings. I am so sorry.”

Zeke hates this. He should be boiling with rage at this whole situation: Him, undeniably and infinitely more competent than Jerome, babbling on about his own “shortcomings” and all but licking Jerome’s boots. All while people, their own soldiers, pass by and watch with bewilderment and pity in their eyes. Some that he knows are loyal to Jerome look purely amused at this public flogging, however.

Jerome, like them, looks delighted. He reaches up and pulls an end of his well-kept moustache. “Well, so long as you understand. And, you know, just because that was so entertaining and polite of you, I’ll only make it half-an-hour of pay I’ll take off.”

Zeke’s heart lunges.

“And? What do you say, Ezekiel?”

There’s the catch. Blugh.

He sets his teeth, takes a deep breath, bows, and says, “Thank you very much, General. Your kindness knows no bounds.”

Jerome appears smug and satisfied, nods, and walks away to go about his own business. Zeke waits until he’s gone from sight, then sighs, slumps his shoulders down, and trudges to his office. Inside, he finds a whole three stacks of paperwork piled up on his desk. He grits his teeth, slams the door shut a little harder than he should, and watches with a sort of resigned-to-misery feeling as one of the stacks topples over.

He wants to go back to sleep.

* * *

About a week later, Zeke gets off of work early—he’s ashamed of it, but he admittedly put much of his day’s work on the desks of a few of his subordinates. They all looked at him with such helpless, dismayed gazes, but he couldn’t help it. He’d just been overcome with the need to go home and be wrapped up in Tatiana’s arms, just for a night. They all have significant others he’s certain they’d like to go home and see, but common soldiers like that get to leave the base much more frequently than someone like him. He uses the thought as comfort and a reassurance for his selfishness.

He stops by the market on the way back to the village, but the stalls are mostly bare. The market in the spring and summer, and even the fall and winter, is usually so lively and colorful, but during the past few months through the war, it’s gotten progressively dimmer and dead. There aren’t people walking around, shopping frivolously; only people nervously checking their coin purses, trying to scrape by and get just the bare minimums of what they need. The vendors all look weary and dismayed at their lack of goods and the prices they’ve been forced to put on what they have. Going shopping feels more like a death march than a fun thing to do on his way home from work, but he does it regardless.

Zeke has ten silver marks to spend, along with a handful of copper pieces. With it, he manages to buy a loaf of fluffy, chewy white bread, a stark difference from the unleavened loaves or black rye breads they’ve been eating for a long while. He haggles a little (unsuccessfully, he might add) with a farmer selling dairy, and winds up spending 4 of his marks on a small wheel of soft, creamy cheese that he knows Tatiana likes. With the last few pieces of money, he gets a pomegranate, some grapes, and a small jug of nonalcoholic apple cider.

It’s a feast compared to what they’ve been eating for the past few months. The last meal they had that came anywhere close to being half as luxurious as this bread and cheese and fruit was a small pot of borscht with a hunk of sourdough bread, along with the last of a jar of preserved peaches split between them. Zeke packs the haul in his saddlebag, grimacing at how little there is, and thinks back more than a little wistfully to the spring, when their cupboards were full of food and their meals were all hearty and delicious.

Zeke takes back what food he can from the base in the forms of meals he doesn’t eat, but it’s not exactly gourmet. It’s usually lumps of hard bread and dried meat that’s too tough to easily chew, and isn’t any better than the flatbread and tea she lives off of. It’s something in her stomach, though, and neither of them do any complaining when there is any sort of food on their plates.

His horse plods through the snow, huffing and shaking his mane. Zeke pats him gently, urging him on with murmurs of encouragement and promises of a sugar cube, but the horse is also hungry. Even their food reserve for the animals is growing a little thin, and Zeke had noticed earlier one of the stablehands, partial to Jerome, swiping handfuls of oats from his own horse’s feed bucket to give to Jerome’s.

How woefully symbolic that feels.

There are snowflakes speckling his hood in a great amount by the time they get back to the village. Zeke sighs as he corrals his horse into a stall, then takes a moment to beat his cloak free of snow. He gives the horse a lump of soft hay in his feed area, drapes a warm blanket over him, and as promised, digs around his saddlebag for a sugar cube as reward. The horse, extremely pleased, snuffles it out of his hand and gratefully accepts a few pats on his nose.

Zeke takes his market haul, trudges through the snow, and kicks his boots against the side of the house to dislodge it before he opens the door and enters. He shuts it behind him, takes his cloak off one-handed, and is greeted with the sight of Tatiana sitting on the floor, white as a sheet as she stares at the ground.

He pauses and tilts his head, regarding her quickly to see if she’s visibly hurt before he panics. There’s no blood anywhere, and she doesn’t look bruised or battered. She just looks a little shocked, if anything, and he slowly asks, “Is something the matter?”

Suddenly, an odd mixture of an extremely amused laugh and a dismayed sob leaves her. She flops back onto the ground and covers her face. “I can’t get in the bath.”

“What?”

Tatiana sniffles, rubs her face, and then giggles again. “My balance is gone. Someone from the church came over and got water and heated it for me, and I can’t get in the bath without feeling like I’m gonna fall over. And then, I came out here, and I _actually_ fell.”

Alarmed suddenly, Zeke puts his shopping to the side. “Did you get hurt?”

“I hurt my ankle, maybe,” she says quietly, “but not bad. I landed on my back and it might bruise a little, but I think I mostly hurt my pride… I- I can’t get up.”

He approaches her and crouches down. He leans over, gently pushing her hands away from her face, and she looks up at him with watery eyes. Her cheeks are pink from embarrassment. He drags his eyes down to the small, barely noticeable bump in her belly, and wonders how it has so badly thrown off the way her body works already.

“How long have you been on the ground, Tatiana?” he asks gently.

She sniffles again. “Only, like, ten minutes.”

Better than two hours, he supposes. Zeke sighs, stands, and offers her his hand. She takes it, wrapping her fingers around his wrist, and he hoists her to her feet easily. Tatiana wobbles as she suddenly becomes upright, but he holds her hand until she’s steady. She still looks embarrassed, but the misery on her face is a little closer to amusement now.

“I think a floorboard is loose.” She points to the ground. “When I stepped on it, it kinda wobbled, and I guess that was enough to throw me off.”

“Loose? Hm.” He gets on a knee and touches the board, hoping briefly it was a figment of her imagination. Unfortunately, it does indeed give a little under his hand. “So it is. That is not good. If your balance is so wrecked, it won't do to have you walking on flooring that isn’t steady.”

She looks guilty when he looks back up at her, as though her pointing out the flaw has made it her fault, somehow. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything.” Zeke grunts as he stands. “How about we get you into that bath?”

Her blush comes back, and she puts her hands on her cheeks. “Ohhh, I can’t believe I need help getting into the tub; I feel so incompetent.”

“It’s fine. It’ll take all of three minutes to get you in there, it’s not a problem.” He puts his hands on her shoulders and pats them, then guides her to the back of the house towards the washroom. “You can have a nice soak, and I’m going to get dinner ready.”

“I think you should sleep,” she says quietly. They get to the washroom, and he’s relieved to find that, somehow, the bath is still steaming in the cold air. He helps her out of her cardigan, and then undoes the buttons on her blouse. He removes it, helps her shimmy out of her skirt and undergarments, and she sits on a stool as he finally helps her with her slippers and socks. She then repeats her statement as he puts a hand in the water to check the temperature.

“I’m fine,” he replies, even though his eyelids feel heavy. He pulls his hand from the water and shakes it free of droplets. “Come here.”

Tatiana skitters in front of the tub as though it is a great, ferocious conquest, and is wobbling on her feet already even before she tries to climb in. He stands behind her, resting his hands on her body, and helps her keep her balance as she braces her hands on the lip of the tub, throws one leg over, and then carefully eases herself into the water. Zeke keeps his hands on her arms, delicately holding her steady until she’s completely settled.

“I’m fine now,” she says after a moment. “Thank you.”

He removes some articles of his own clothing—his coat, his cravat, his waistcoat—and sets them to the side. Tatiana shuts her eyes as he rolls his sleeves up and scoops his hands into the water, lifting out a handful and dumping it over her head. She sinks deeper into the water, giggling as he lifts more handfuls out and soaks her. She laughs and protests that she can wash herself, but he reaches for the soap regardless and scrubs it into her hair. She doesn't protest any further.

“How’s work?” she asks.

He lifts her mane of hair up, scrubbing the nape of her neck. He tries to hide the anxiety in his voice as he tells her the truth, because he can’t think of any reason he should lie to her. The news will spread eventually, and so: “We received word this morning that Chancellor Desaix is dead.”

Tatiana is quiet, all her glee gone. Silence falls into the washroom, save for the sound of water dripping to the floor.

He finishes scrubbing the soap in her hair and grabs a sponge nearby, moves to the other end of the tub, and takes a seat on the stool. Tatiana turns her face away from him, but lifts her leg out of the water when he holds out a hand. He holds her despairingly thin ankle in his hand, sighs as he takes in the sight of her thin body, and starts to scrub her leg. “If we on the border received the info from intelligence today, that likely means that it happened a week or so ago.”

She hums and sinks down into the water, covering her lower face for a moment, and then comes back up to ask, “What happens next? Doesn’t that mean that the Zofians have their country back?”

Zeke cleans the dust off of the bottom of her foot, puts her leg back in the water, and holds out his hand for her other. “In a manner of speaking. Our forces are still occupying Zofia, and as far as I know, Emperor Rudolf has no intention of withdrawing them. In fact, I hear word of an advance, even now that that pig Desaix is gone.”

Tatiana visibly squirms at this. “Emperor Rudolf never seemed the conquering type to me. I don’t know what to say… Ever since I was a little girl, he only ever seemed like a fair ruler.”

“Even as someone who knows him personally, I cannot say what he’s thinking, obviously.” Zeke takes a break to rub his hand over his eyes, dislodging the overpowering urge for sleep. “In any case, it means the Zofians will keep advancing further and further north, until they push us back over the border, and after that- Well, I am not sure.”

She reaches up and scrubs some suds out of her hair. “What would you do?”

He finishes cleaning her off and gently puts her leg back in the tub. “Hm. Following the defeat of Desaix, I would likely set up base in his stronghold for a time: a month, perhaps. A rich man like him would have plenty of resources to take advantage of before moving on. There needs to be time to give the soldiers to heal and eat, get their physical and moral strength back for the push ahead. After that, drive out the invaders, and after that…” He pauses, chewing the inside of his cheek, and puts a hand to his jaw as he thinks.

“Zeke?” Tatiana questions.

“I have a split in morality here,” Zeke admits. “On the more… human hand, so to speak, that is all that needs to be done. If the invaders are out of your country, they are out, and your people are safe for the time being. There’s no need to push any further and cause any more bloodshed.”

“Mmhm.”

“On the more militaristic hand, however, I-” He puts the sponge down and clasps his hands together, resting his elbows on his knees. “As a general, Tatiana, you must understand, there are certain things we ‘have’ to do. A lot of the time, you have to put aside your humanity, in a way, to do those certain, hard things.”

She looks a little discomforted by this, but nods. “Mmhmm?”

“And, we-” Zeke sighs and rests his lips against his hands, thinking, then looks up at her again. “And we ‘have’ to do it to ensure our people stay safe for a long, long time. Not just ‘for the time being.’ We… have to do it for people like you and me.”

Tatiana tilts her head, scrunching her nose as she regards him. Her hair floats along the surface of the water. “Do what? How do you mean ‘us?’”

“We often feel we have to take an extra step,” he elaborates. “Instead of just pushing back the invaders, you go further. You push on deeper and deeper into their territory, until you leave a scar that reminds them your country—your _people—_ are not for the taking. You have to send them a firm, clear sign that they cannot come back, and that you will not be tread upon again.”

She looks displeased with this idea and the implication, but allows him to finish.

“What I am trying to say is that, as a simple man, I am against the concept of driving back an invasion past a border. It feels like too much bloodshed. But, as a general, Tatiana, I would keep pushing.” He swallows and squeezes his hands together. “Until the opposing force got the message. And I would do that to ensure they won’t come back, and so that people like you and I can continue to be safe. People with- with families, you see.”

Tatiana dunks her head under the water very suddenly, the second he’s done speaking, sits there for ten long, long seconds, then comes back up. The soap is slipping away from her hair, and the suds float along the surface. “I guess I can understand that, but I don’t know if I like it. I don’t like any kind of brutality.”

“I know.”

“And in this scenario, you aren’t the one calling the shots,” she continues. She turns her does eyes up to him, and he sees fear—raw fear, for them, their village, their country, their _child—_ in their depths. “The Zofians are. And they may not be as honorable as you. What if they invade us, and they take to mindless slaughter of the people?”

“That, my sweet, has a simple solution.” Zeke plants his hands on his knees and grunts as he pushes himself up. He dips his hand into the water, pleased that it is still warm; she’ll be able to soak and relax for a while longer. Tatiana still looks frightened, waiting for his reply, and he brushes his hand along her cheek before cupping it.

“Zeke?” She leans into his touch, but her voice still carries fear that he can’t bear.

“Tatiana, listen to me.” He crouches down, lowering himself to eye-level with her, and pulls the wet strands of hair away from her cheek. “If the Zofians take one step over our border and make one wrong move towards people like you, who cannot defend themselves for whatever reason? I am going to kill every. Last. One of them.”

Tatiana swallows, stares into his eyes, as though she’s searching to see if he’s speaking the truth. And he hopes, so desperately, that he can communicate to her that what he feels isn’t bloodlust, nor a desire for senseless violence. He hopes she knows, without him having to lay it bare, that he only means to protect her and their child the only way he knows how.

She gives him a forced, quivering smile, touches his hand with trembling fingers, and nods so slightly.

* * *

Jerome didn’t get to be a general purely by his family’s money, though he won’t deny that that was a great part of it. He got to be a general because he’s _good_ at his job, and he’s never failed his superiors before. Or, at least, he didn’t in his youth. Nowadays, he still pleases them, but he’s taken more to letting his own subordinates handle things. It’s what he deserves, you know, after all of his years of diligent service.

The one thing he is the best at, however, that he doesn’t let his bumbling, brainless, brutish men handle, is investigation.

It doesn’t take a master detective to know that something is wrong with Ezekiel, however. It’s all so obvious in the scrunch of his brow, the way he keeps his eyes on the ground, how he dozes off sometimes in the middle of meetings until one of his lieutenants gently puts a hand on his arm to stir him before something important comes up. Jerome figured out a long while ago that Ezekiel deals with some mixture of depression and anxiety, but the dark circles under his eyes and nervous energy coming off of him goes beyond that.

Ezekiel might be weak and inept, certainly, but he normally carries himself well. He walks around with his chin in the air and his shoulders thrown back, acting like he’s so special and superior. Even the way he communicates: that annoyingly gruff, but pristine, voice, the furrow of his eyebrows like he’s always deep in thought. It’s all annoying, loathsomely so. Jerome has been more than happy to see him walking around like a husk of his old self in the past months, but he’s gotten worse in the last three weeks. Those dark circles under his eyes have gotten even more unsightly.

Jerome wants to know why. Anyone would. He wants to know why Ezekiel is suddenly slinking around, trudging like a shackled ghost. He wants to know the meaning behind his suspicious behaviors. The darting eyes, the uneaten meals carefully packed and taken home, the sheer amount of time he spends in his office without leaving, and most of all, why he is suddenly choosing to go home at least three times a week despite the time it takes when previously, he only went home once a week, if that.

He wants to know, and simple “want” is all it takes to drive Jerome.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUFFS i got through the busy season of work................... now i can write again............... this chap went through a few last minute rewrites and scene additions, and i edited it as best i could, so i think it should be smooth. as usual though you can expect me to go through before i update with the next chap and try to smooth things over even more. please enjoy!!

“Sir, if I may.”

Jerome grimaces and lowers a letter to look at him. He leans back in his chair and kicks up his feet, placing his crisp, clean boots on the edge of his desk. “Ezekiel?”

Zeke purses his lips and swallows, looks down at the papers, and notes what they are: Inventory order forms, food budgets, personnel sheets, payrolls, the like. In plain terms, they are simple, dull things that are menial, even by his standards. “I do not mean to sound proud, sir,” he begins slowly. “But, do you not think such work is beneath me?”

Jerome’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, just about. “No work is beneath anyone during wartimes, Ezekiel. We must all pick up one another’s slack, you see. It’s how we keep our battalion a well-oiled machine.”

Now, Zeke would not mind that explanation, were it that Jerome was doing the same. But, a quick sweep of his eyes over Jerome’s office indicates nothing of importance. No chalkboards with battle strategies, no stacks of papers, no nothing. Zeke notes that there’s a fiction novel on Jerome’s desk, but he doubts it has much relevance to the war, or any of their duties.

This is too much work for Zeke, on top of the actual work—work befitting of his station as a general—he has sitting in his office. He’s in the middle of planning a solid formation, just in case the Zofians come across the border, and thinks, if he’s estimated the size and skill-level of their force just right, it could ensnare them. He’s got other plans he’s drafting as well, along with correspondences he needs to write to other generals, both abroad in Zofia and home in Rigel.

Zeke doesn’t need, and he especially doesn’t want, all of this menial work on his plate. It’s important for certain, but it’s not _his_ work. It’s the work of a captain or a lieutenant, and he’s certain more than a couple of Jerome’s lackeys are having a grand day off while Zeke does their work for them. Jerome seems to be piling it on him more and more lately, and he struggles to manage it and go home to Tatiana on the regular.

“Just do it and it will be done,” Jerome tells him. At the sound of a knock at the door, he says, “Enter,” and goes back to his letter.

Zeke once more fumbles with the papers, and takes a second to tap them against the desk to try and get them in order. As he does so, a military cleric comes in, a tea tray in her hands and an annoyed expression on her face as she regards Zeke. Not an expression directed at him; her eyes flicker to a preoccupied Jerome in a deliberate manner before looking back to him, as if to ask, “Can you believe this?” The base employs civilian help for more domestic matters, such as cleaning and food preparation, and Zeke wonders what this cleric did for her to be the one serving Jerome his tea instead of a hired maid.

“Late,” Jerome snaps without even looking up.

The cleric flinches before scowling at him. Zeke sees the urge, the tension in her arms, to simply snap the tray down on his desk and storm out, but she sucks in a breath, lightly sets the tray down, and starts pouring a cup. “Sorry,” she grumbles, and then tacks on a “sir.”

Zeke gives her a pitying look when she glances back up at him; he can’t do anything for her in his position. He and Jerome share the same rank, but Jerome has the seniority and thus most of the power over their battalion. There’s absolutely nothing Zeke can do for clerics being made to serve coffee instead of the maids, or for himself, being made to check the inventory instead of literally almost anyone else.

“Damnable military clerics, can’t even bring coffee on time,” Jerome grumbles, and the cleric bristles. “You’d never see that sort of behavior from a nice sister in some church. Now that’s some good, good service.”

Zeke whacks the papers against the desk, finally righting them all, and the sharp sound makes Jerome jump. “Religious clerics aren’t your servants,” he snaps. “Don’t speak of them as though their job is to make you a meal when more often than not, they only do so because you storm into their places of worship and impose on them.”

Jerome’s eyes flicker up from his letter to burn into Zeke; his mustache twitches. “Shut up, you brute. By the gods, I forgot how touchy you get whenever I bring up the sisters. You don’t need to defend them, especially not when I’m only speaking truth; clerics are no more than housewives trying to make themselves relevant.”

Zeke wonders if when Jerome speaks, he ever really hears the garbage that comes out of his mouth.

The cleric bristles again, and Zeke can practically feel her desire to dump the hot coffee into Jerome’s lap. Her jaw is set in an angry line, and the way she’s stirring the drink is slow and menacing as she glares down at him. Zeke really, really wishes she would dump the drink on him, but knows it would get her in the deepest of trouble.

He holds his tongue regarding another comment (“You shouldn’t speak of housewives in a derogatory manner either, you cad, just be gracious for once in your miserable life.”), knowing it will only get him further into a fight about Jerome’s awful, awful treatment of women as a whole. He picks his battle, sets the papers under his arm and stands straight, then stares at the ground as he waits for a dismissal. He’s not stupid; Jerome is obviously holding him, intending to poke at some subject, and he just wants it over with.

“You, go.” Jerome snatches the mug from the disgruntled cleric, still not bothering to look at her, and then nods to Zeke. “You, stay.”

Zeke and the cleric exchange brief eye contact as she makes for the door, and he’s certain they both feel some solidarity towards one another. She exits after mouthing "good luck," and shuts the door quietly. Zeke waits for Jerome to talk.

Jerome takes a long drink of the coffee, twists his face in displeasure, and puts it to the side. “Moron. Can’t even make a good pot. I should’ve had the maid do it, but that one needed to be taught a lesson for mouthing off to her superiors.”

Zeke hums disinterestedly. He keeps his position, though lets his mind wander to the week’s finances; they’re short on money this week, Tatiana needs food he can’t buy, and so he needs to not eat his meals and take them to her. He needs to find or do something, scrape up virtually anything. He’s lost in this, budgeting finances and resources in his head until Jerome speaks again.

“All this cleric talk has reminded me: I haven’t asked after your personal life for a while, Ezekiel.” Jerome removes his boots from the edge of his desk and sits properly in his chair, smiling as he leans forward and steeples his fingers. “And we are very close, after all, so I feel as though I’ve done you a disservice.”

Zeke’s heart stops in his chest. He fumbles for a moment, though tries to not show it. “My personal life is well, sir.”

“The perfect picture of quaint domesticity as always, I presume?” Jerome presses. “Tatiana is doing well?”

By the gods, more than anything, Zeke hates the sound of her name slipping out of Jerome’s mouth. He struggles to not say anything about it, and instead replies with an even, “She is quite well, sir. She’s as perfect as always.”

“Mmm.” Jerome unclasps his hands, letting one of them tweak a bauble on his desk into place. “I do like checking up on her, you see. I made my advancements towards her when we first met, but she was young.”

Zeke knew this, of course; he was made privy to that unfortunate piece of information a while back, shared during some idle pillow talk in the middle of the night. Tatiana had divulged that Jerome had made some extremely sexual advances towards her when she was seventeen, a while before before Zeke came around. He remembers the way she’d tried to laugh it off and make the story out to be amusing, but also the way she’d shifted about the sheets uncomfortably, fingers curling against the edges of the pillow under her chest, eyes unwilling to meet his.

He struggles to not throw the papers down and break Jerome’s jaw.

“I presumed she just either didn’t know what a good offer she was getting, or that she was, perhaps, under an oath of celibacy, the latter of which I must respect.” Jerome rests a cheek against a fist and regards Zeke from the side of his eye. “But seeing as how you two are… _cohabitating,_ it is certainly not the case. I suppose Tatiana simply isn’t in possession of a brain.”

Zeke jams his tongue into his cheek, then speaks against his better judgement. “Sir, you are aware that speaking in that manner regarding one’s partner is just begging to be punched in the face?”

Rather than anger, Jerome laughs. “I suppose so!”

He doesn’t take back what he said. Zeke feels his hands starting to shake.

“So everything is alright? Nothing… new? Or unusual?” Jerome keeps pressing. “Tatiana is very well?”

“She’s fine,” Zeke snaps, bristling. “We’re both fine!”

In surrender, Jerome raises his hands. “Well, damn me for wanting to check in with my subordinate. You’re dismissed, Ezekiel. Will you be headed home for the evening? I do notice you’re doing that more often than you were last month.”

Zeke lowers his eyes. “It’s not any of your business, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

He feels Jerome’s eyes on him as he leaves the office.

* * *

The carpenter in the village is a tall, broad man, with light brown skin, pensive gray eyes, and long black hair, who goes by the name of Elias. He’s been Tatiana’s close friend since childhood, and she would liken him more unto an elder brother than anything else, the same way she would liken most of her friends unto siblings. It’s this bond, perhaps, and her need for a floorboard that she won’t fall over walking on that brings her to him one late afternoon with a handful of coppers and a little scrap of paper with measurements.

“Lucky for you, I’ve got the right wood for your floor,” he’s saying as he moves through his workshop. “Take a seat on that bench. Won’t take me that long.”

Tatiana sighs and does as asked, taking a seat near the entrance to the shed. She peers outside at the snow—white, sparkling underneath the sunlight. “Sorry to bother you in the middle of the day.”

“It’s fine,” he replies. He leans a thin piece of wood up against the wall of the workshop, picks up her scrap of paper, regards it, and then makes for his tools. “I’m almost hesitant to take your money. You’re looking mighty thin, kid.”

“You have to let me pay you,” Tatiana protests. “You’ve got your daughter, after all.” She pauses at this, and then crosses her arms and says, “And I have been putting on weight, thank you very much.”

“All from that baby, I’m sure. Not proper weight.” Elias sets a saw on his work bench and turns the board over in his hand, examining it. “Food prices at the market are awful high this week.”

She leans against the wall and sighs, lowering her hands into her lap. Her body agrees with his statement, as her stomach growls almost painfully. If Elias hears this, he makes no comment on it, but she’s embarrassed regardless. Her only meal today has been half-a-loaf of flatbread, a strip of tasteless dried fish, and a cup of weak tea. It’s her only meal for the day, and the same was her only meal yesterday, and the day before that. And it was her last meal for the foreseeable future, because there’s no more bread, and she’s down to her last strip of fish.

She’s starving. Perhaps literally so. She’s less worried for herself than she is for her little friend.

The sound of metal cutting through wood, a harsh grate, echoes in the workshop as he puts his tools to the board. He doesn’t speak to her during this time; Elias has always been a man of few words, even when they were children, and doesn’t see much point in talking if it’s not necessary. This is fine with Tatiana, however. She waits quietly, watching as a gaggle of kids go rushing past the workshop, crunching through the snow.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks eventually as he’s smoothing the wood. “Any issues?”

Tatiana wishes, just a little, that someone would talk to her about anything else besides her pregnancy. “I’ve been fine. Except for that food problem. But I think we’re all suffering through that.”

“Understatement of the year,” is his reply. “What I wouldn’t give for even something terrible like bear meat.”

“I want a big steak,” Tatiana agrees. She leans forward, resting her elbow against a knee, and puts her chin in a hand. “And fresh fruit. Probably not at the same time. Steak for dinner, and some berries and cream for a nice dessert.”

“We probably won’t even be getting that as the spring rolls around,” Elias says. He flips the board over and starts dragging his tools along the other side, smoothing out splinters and cracks. “Who knows how long this stupid war is going to last? Even when the harvest starts up and we’re able to get food, it’ll just be going to the snobs in the north and the soldiers on the frontlines.”

She closes her eyes and chews on the inside of her cheek. A chilly wind blows by, pushing open the door to the workshop a little further, allowing in a stronger streak of light. “Zeke told me last week that Chancellor Desaix kicked the bucket.”

Elias stops his work. He doesn’t turn towards her, but turns his head. “He think that’s gonna stop this mess?”

Tatiana’s heart skips a few beats. “No. He told me he doesn’t think the emperor has any plans to pull back the army. It doesn’t make sense, though. I thought we were just in Zofia to support Desaix. I don’t get why we’re not leaving now that he’s gone.” She sighs and hangs her head, shaking it. “Zeke says- Well, he says he thinks the Zofians are gonna march into Rigel.”

Elias starts his work again, and doesn’t speak for a long while. He works, works, and then just as he takes the board off the table, says, “This war isn’t stopping soon. Nothing is going to get any easier for us. You take care of yourself, Tatiana.”

Tatiana stands from the bench, brushing her skirts down. Elias extends the board to her, yet even as she wraps her fingers around it, doesn’t let it go. She freezes, gripping the wood, and hesitantly looks up into his eyes. She finds worry there, some mild degree of panic. It’s the same look everyone has been giving her. Everyone is worried. Worried that she let this happen to herself, and now is going to suffer for it. She wishes they’d stop looking at her like that.

“That baby needs you,” he says, then lets go of the board.

Tatiana’s blood chills.

Elias moves back to his workbench, moving things around and packing up his tools. “I can put that in for free, if you want. Least I can do.”

“No, it’s fine,” she mumbles. “Zeke said he would.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.” He doesn’t say anything else, just keeps his back to her. Tatiana takes this as an invitation to go with her purchase, and takes her leave of the workshop.

There’s still gooseflesh on her arms when she walks out. Her boots crunch into the crisp snow, and she sighs, hefts the wood further up beneath her arm, and starts the trek back to her house. A few people here and there offer to help her with her load, eyeing it and her nervously, but she refuses them all. Her annoyance grows at the way everyone approaches her with their hands outstretched, overly-concerned looks on their faces, as though Tatiana is a delicate flower just because she’s almost four months pregnant, like she needs someone to do everything for her. She wants them to stop worrying and fussing. She’s fine, she can carry a board of wood just fine, and-

-and maybe she can’t.

Tatiana feels woozy all of a sudden, nearly toppling forward in her next step. The blacksmith looks at her, visibly worried from his position outside his shop, but leaves her be when she wordlessly waves a hand. Her legs tremble a little, and her body feels painfully light. She feels, very acutely, her hunger once more as she places the floorboard against a neighbor’s house while she catches her breath. She’s breathing heavy, dizzier still as she thinks about how starving she is, but she still catches the sound of someone approaching her through the snow. She’s already irritated by it.

“Are you okay, _myshka?”_ The voice, and a brief glance upwards, tells her that it’s the baker, hovering next to her nervously and reaching for the board. “Do you need me to help you? Here, let me-”

Maybe a little too quickly, Tatiana snatches up the plank of wood, and her head spins. She blinks as the world flips, but then things are steady again in just another second. She clutches the evidence of her errand, the proof that she went out and did something, and shakes her head. Her mouth is dry, but she still manages to say, “So kind of you, Elena, but no thank you. I’m almost home.”

Elena dithers for a moment; Tatiana can see her thinking about whether or not she wants to fight Tatiana over this. She gives up after a moment, wishes her well, and leaves on her merry way. Tatiana hefts the wood, braces herself, and keeps on going. The walk home is only another couple of minutes. She can force herself to make it. She doesn’t need help.

It feels like, as of late, there’s not much that she can do. There’s not a lot that people will _let_ her do, more like. She can work at the church for certain, go about her duties as a cleric, though she can’t do some things she used to, such as mix certain medicines or get on her hands and knees and scrub the chapel floors until they shine. She can do her job to an extent, but not without a brother or sister hovering over her, as though they expect her to collapse or puke out her guts or even give birth any second.

It’s annoying. It makes her feel self-conscious. It makes her feel useless. Nobody would treat her like this normally. She doesn’t understand why things had to change.

Tatiana feels as though, more pressingly, there’s not a lot of work for her to do that helps Zeke. Nothing she can do to even alleviate his stress and worry. Nothing at all. Tatiana has been thinking lately that she’s been more of a burden than anything else. She just tries to not think about this too much.

A day passes from the time she brings the new floor board home to when Zeke is able to come home next. She’s folding laundry in the bedroom, and he comes into the house so quietly she nearly doesn’t hear him. When she peeks out from the hallway, he looks awful. Slumped, head bowed towards the floor, stiff-limbed as he shuts the door behind him. The second it closes, he lets out a long, weary sigh before he starts to remove his scarf and cloak.

Tatiana ducks back into the bedroom for a moment, sweeping up some freshly-laundered clothes from her pile of laundry on the bed, and heads for Zeke again. He looks even more exhausted than the last time she saw him, as though he’s barely able to keep himself upright. The shadows under his eyes are thick when he looks at her, and she wonders when the last time he got more than three hours of sleep was. It’s almost like he doesn’t recognize her in his exhaustion for a split-second, and then he mumbles a greeting.

Tatiana offers the clothes to him quietly, checking for any signs of physical harm on his body. If he’s hurt for any reason, she can help with that. But, she finds no scrapes or wounds. “I did the laundry, so you can put these on and get comfortable.”

Zeke blinks as he finishes unfurling the cravat from around his neck. He takes the clothes with a very quiet thanks and makes his way to the back of the house to change, no further conversation given. He’s not normally the chattiest, but he usually gives her more than just a mumble. Tatiana eyes the floorboard propped up against the wall, wondering if he’ll have the energy to repair it; he looks too weary, too unfocused. Maybe he’s tired enough he won’t notice if she invites Elias to come over and install it, or if she just does it herself.

Maybe that would make her useful. Maybe she should have done that before he got home.

Tatiana hears splashing in the back, likely as he throws some water from the basin over his face. She wishes he would just lay down and go to sleep rather than try to keep awake; she picked out a particularly comfortable pair of trousers and a loose shirt for him, in the hopes that perhaps some clothing more lax than a waistcoat and cravat would get him to flop down on the bed. But, he comes down the hallway, still slumped in a way so different from his normal, refined composure, and she just doesn’t know how to convince him to sleep.

“Did you get that new floorboard?” Zeke asks, just a second before he glances down to his right and sees it. “Ah. Good. Thank you.”

“I know you said you were gonna replace it, but what if I did?” Tatiana suggests; she starts wringing her hands together as he gives her a look. “I know how to use the tools I’d need to replace it, you know. I can put the new one in, and you can go get a few extra hours of sleep.”

“There’s no need for you to do that,” he says firmly. “I do not want you to go getting on your knees and bending over.”

 _You sure seemed to want me to do a lot of that a few months ago,_ she wants to protest, _and that’s how we got into this situation, isn’t it now?_

“Before I get to replacing it.” Zeke strides past her, finds his satchel on the coat hook beneath his cloak, and takes it to the table. She watches as he sets it down. “It’s embarrassing that this is all I can do for a while, but our food budget isn’t enough for how expensive the market is this week, and we are not getting a lot to eat at work either.”

“You can’t keep bringing your meals back to me,” Tatiana chides as she scrutinizes him. Leaner than he was at the start of the winter no doubt. A little more haggard. It worries her. But, she _is_ hungry.

“I am eating just fine without these parts of my rations,” Zeke defends, and he pulls a couple of loaves of flatbread, a small, tied bundle of dried meat, and a jar of what is probably yogurt. “This will have to do for the next few days.”

The concept of that makes Tatiana want to scream, quite frankly. She’s hungry, exhausted, and knows she could sit down and eat all of that right now. It probably wouldn’t even make a dent in her hunger. Of course, she won’t vocalize that frustration, no matter how upset the amount makes her. But she finds herself wishing that she could do something to help, something to bring in money or food or _anything._

“Thank you,” she mumbles quietly. She knows from the way his shoulders slump and how he sighs that he sees through her, but doesn’t know how to fix up the situation. She just stands there, awkwardly, as Zeke pulls a chair out and takes a seat. He puts his head in a hand and shuts his eyes. “I mean it. Thank you.”

“I am sorry,” he mumbles. “I am sorry this is all I can do. I promise I would do better if I just- if I could just-”

“I know it’s hard.” Tatiana steps forward and collects the scant food, balancing the flatbread and meat in one hand, the jar in the other. Zeke is still mumbling, barely audible, as she sets the food down on the kitchen counter. She puts it down, then reaches for a drawer and pulls it open. A small, leather-bound book stares up at her, and she takes it out and opens it to regard Zeke’s pristine handwriting. He always copies down their budget from his own book into this one for her when he comes home. And now, as though she’s hoping it’s changed from the last time she read it this morning, she reads over the small numbers and other notes.

“We have-” Zeke is still talking, a little louder now. Tatiana looks over her shoulder at him as he puts his face in his hands. “We have money. It’s not a lot, but it’s money. And if this- if this was just any other season, any other time, we would have enough. But the supply and demand is just all screwed, and it costs three silver to get just a stupid loaf of bread when it normally costs just a few copper, and-”

“It’s fine,” Tatiana says sharply, and he stops talking. She looks back down at the finance book, lips pressed as she reads the budget yet again. He’s making about fifteen silver this week, which would translate to five loaves of bread, or even more if they consider the money they have in savings. But that money is for if something goes _really_ wrong, only if they really need it. As it is now, having to split those fifteen silvers between bread and the other things they have to pay for, such as clothing, meat, water, it’s not much.

It’s not fine.

“You’re just doing your best,” Tatiana assures as she puts the book away. She closes the drawer, and doesn’t know if her hand is shaking from hunger or stress. “No one can blame you for anything that’s happening. I’m sure the prices will be down again by next week, and- and maybe we’ll be able to afford something nice. Maybe we can get _you_ something nice. What would you want?”

Zeke puts his other hand to his head and drags both through his hair as he snorts in amusement, like the concept of eating a meal he really wants is so funny. “A good cut of meat and a bottle of wine. That would cost as much as two week’s pay, however.”

Tatiana chews on her lip. She pulls out a chair across from him and sits, huffing a little as her body aches in an odd way as she does. Fixing the floor on her own may not be a good idea, but she’ll still have to suggest it later. “You’re right. We have to think practical for now. Maybe in a couple of months we can do that, but for now… Maybe we can get some sweet bread and some preserved fruit? We can try to make a dessert out of that.”

Zeke moves suddenly then, slamming a hand down on the table as he keeps rubbing his face with the other. Tatiana jumps at the movement and sound, swallowing, but he doesn’t seem to realize how harsh or sudden the action was. She can’t see his face as he drags his hand over it, but can see a stiffness in his jaw. He says then, “By the gods, just listen to us. Just listen to us, Tatiana! Just eight months ago we were- Gods, we had all the food we needed or even wanted, we had money, we had time to spend together, and now what? We’re talking like a cut of meat and a bottle of cheap wine is a luxury reserved for the grandest of kings, like some bread and a jar of overripe apple preserves would be the best thing that ever happened to us!”

“I don’t like that tone, Ezekiel,” she snaps back. “Just admit that we’re doing our best and that you can’t fill our coffer with a snap of your fingers. It’ll make you less stressed if you just admit there are some things you can’t do, and we just have to take what we can get right now.”

Zeke lets out a shaking breath, and presses the back of his hand against his forehead. She hears a tapping on the floor and knows his leg is jittering; a clear sign of his anxiety she’s picked up on detecting over the past couple of years. “I should do more. There has to be something else I can do so you- you don’t starve-”

“I’m not gonna starve,” she scolds, but her heart is also starting to beat faster. “Stop telling yourself stuff like that. You’re going to have a panic attack.”

“I’m fine,” he insists, but his voice is strained. “I am fine, I promise.”

Tatiana knows somewhere in the back of her mind that right now likely isn’t the best time to bring this up, but she presses her lips again, puts her palms against the table, and says, “Go to sleep. I’m going to fix the floor.”

A little grunt leaves him, followed by an exasperated sigh. Zeke shifts his hand and looks at her, glaring. “I am not so useless that I cannot do chores around my own damn house.”

Useless. Useless? He doesn’t know what it’s like to be useless.

“I want to do it,” Tatiana insists, and she stands. Her body aches again, just a dull pain all over, but she ignores it. She doesn’t want to do it, but she’s going to. “I want you to go sleep.”

Zeke slumps even more than before, shaking his head as he hangs it. “No. It’s not worth arguing about- Why are you arguing about it with me? I told you I was going to do it when I came home next.”

“I’m not arguing,” she snaps, balling up a fist. “I just want to do some damn work around here!”

Baffled, Zeke turns his head and looks up to her. He blinks, stares a little more, and then stands with a pained grunt. He pushes the chair in, polite despite the obvious anger, and grumbles, “I am not in the mood for a spat, Tatiana.”

“I’m not gonna go fall over and die because I nailed a dumb floorboard into place!” All Tatiana can think to do now is put her foot down, even if it makes her seem unfair. She taps her foot and points back at the bedroom wordlessly.

“You cannot-” Zeke reaches up and drags a hand over his face, which seems to be his signature move of the night. “You cannot tell me what to do.”

“You can’t tell _me_ what to do!”

He takes an inhale, sets his jaw, and she sees the anger in him growing. He never takes to anger so quickly, and she pins it on the exhaustion. “Tatiana. I am already stressed over our budget and work. I do not. Want. To fight. Over one _stupid_ chore.”

“Well then, don’t fight with me. Go lie down and let me put the stupid thing in place. And then, once you’ve rested, we can keep talking about our food problem.”

“Tatiana-”

“I’m not about to stop being stubborn,” she snaps at him. “Just _let_ me do something-”

“What’s this sudden, idiotic talk about- about wanting to make yourself useful? You’re talking like you don’t go work every day-”

“That’s not helping _you!”_

A blow to his pride for certain, she can tell. Zeke takes a sharp intake of breath, squeezes the bridge of his nose, and raises his voice as he says, “‘Help me, help me, help me?’ I don’t need you to help me!”

Tatiana feels tears welling up in her eyes and damns herself for it. She doesn’t know if it’s dumb baby hormones, her natural inclination to burst into tears at every little thing, or maybe both. She hates it either way, and the fact that it’s not going to help anyone. She starts blubbering a little, voice thick as she says, “Ezekiel, this is so _stupid,_ I just wanna- Just let me-!”

He cuts her off by raising a hand, extending an almost trembling pointer finger in a gesture that clearly means “Please, shut up,” without him actually saying it. Tatiana curls her fists and holds them close to her stomach, holding her breath and waiting for the extremely, _extremely_ rare blow-up she’s about to see from Zeke, and doesn’t know whether or not she deserves to get screamed at. Maybe. Maybe not. She’s too tired and hungry to really think about it. She honestly feels barely here in the room, like half of her is conscious and the other half is not.

Zeke’s voice is stony, dreadfully tight and quiet as he says, “Tatiana, I swear I’m-” and that’s as far as he gets.

A knock on the door cuts him off, and the sound of it hangs heavy in the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder that you can find me on twitter @tatianalovemail, which is really just me yelling abt tatizeke + other things. in addition we have a tatizeke discord that you can find info about [here](http://tatizekes.tumblr.com/post/164983041867/click-here-to-join-the-server-i-really-cant-find) on my tumblr. the chat has been mildly quiet lately (partially because a lot of us work/are in school or both) and it would be fun to have new people to come and talk with us!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not much to say except a) i have writer's block which is why im not publishing anything and b) i'm back in school which is why im not publishing anything. but also!! a friend and i are hosting a tatizeke zine called "tomorrow awaits" and you can find it [here](https://twitter.com/tatizekezine) on twitter! we'd really appreciate if you all would support us—we've got lots of great artists and writers doing their best!
> 
> enjoy reading, and thank you as always for your support!!!

The knock feels like some sort of harbinger, were one to put it dramatically.

It’s as though there’s something bad waiting out on the doorstep. Though, Zeke doesn’t think that there’s anything like a Bonewalker sitting outside of their house. He hopes, perhaps, that this is just something normal, and maybe the bad feeling is just lingering from their argument. He looks to the door, over to the window, and then meets Tatiana’s gaze.

Yet, Zeke knows the same bad feeling has settled on her as well, if the way she’s paled significantly is any indicator. Tatiana’s instinct is always good, always sharp, especially when compared to his sometimes muddled, anxiety-ridden senses.

There is, in fact, something wrong.

He points to the back of the house, puts the floorboard against a chair, and approaches her, whispering lowly, “Get in the bedroom, Tatiana, and please, do _not_ come out until I come and get you.”

Tatiana parts her lips, likely to ask a question or express some defiance, but she looks at the door as there’s another knock, then up into his face again. She presses her mouth into a tight line and nods, but he can see the dissatisfaction on her face. Quietly, she slips to the back of the house.

Zeke waits until he hears the door shut before he makes for the front entrance, from which there comes another impatient, noisy knock just as he puts his hand over the doorknob. Zeke clenches his jaw, wishing he didn’t recognize that manner of very distinctive knocking. He screws his courage to the sticking place after another moment and twists the knob in his hand. When he opens the door, he really wishes he was surprised to see Jerome.

Son of a bitch.

“Ezekiel!” Jerome grins; Zeke notices a large basket, covered in a cloth, hanging from his hand. “I was still very worried about you, you see, so I thought I would make a house call.”

Jerome makes a move forward, but Zeke plants himself firmly in the doorway. Jerome raises his brows and leans back as Zeke puts his hands on either side of the doorframe, looming outwards towards his superior. They’re not working, and aren’t anywhere near the military base; Jerome has no dominion over him here, and Zeke feels empowered by that. They’re simply two people, no status involved.

Zeke frowns at him. “Jerome. You are not welcome on my property.”

Jerome’s mustache twitches in clear annoyance, but he recovers and waves a hand. “Don’t be that way, Zeke! I-”

“Do not call me that.”

“Don’t be that way, Ezekiel! I know we have our disagreements at work, but I come in peace. I have-”

“We have disagreements on morality in general, Jerome.”

“Yes, but, that doesn’t mean we can’t-”

“Allow me to make it very, very clear.” Zeke takes a step out of the house, shutting the door behind him as he moves. He notices, perhaps for the first time in a long, long time, that he is much bigger than Jerome. “I do not like men like you. Men who abuse their power. Men who steal and cheat. Men who disrespect women. I especially do _not_ like men who have made disrespectful, unwanted, _lewd_ advances towards Tatiana.”

Jerome pales as he skitters backwards. Zeke feels a little triumphant; it’s obvious that Jerome is also aware of the lack of a power imbalance—or, more likely, the shift of it in Zeke’s favor—outside of work.

“That was years ago,” Jerome defends. “About three now, if I’m not mistaken? Water under the bridge, I’m certain.”

“Being a man who goes through women like they’re disposable objects,” Zeke says slowly, “‘tis no wonder you would think so.”

Jerome frowns. “Soft now, Ezekiel. Or, I won’t give you this.” He brandishes the basket then, almost like a shield, and Zeke pauses his advance.

The basket is overflowing with food—nice food. Just on sight, in a corner uncovered by the cloth, Zeke finds a jar of roasted coffee beans, a thick loaf of white bread, a collection of chicken eggs. The basket is sizable, and he anticipates there’s much, much more beneath the surface. And all of a sudden, he forgets about intimidating Jerome, and just goes back to thinking about the meager amount of food he put on their table five minutes ago, how they don’t have enough money in the food budget this week, how expensive everything at the market is-

“Even for a wealthy man such as yourself, it must be hard to get a hold of good food, given our situation. The dead of the winter, with any harvest or supplies being shipped either north to the nobility or down south to the frontlines? Money can’t buy food if there’s hardly any to be had.” Tauntingly, Jerome swings the basket. “But I have my ways of getting what I want, and I thought it would be kind to share with you and your sweetheart.”

Zeke stands still, trying to not let the desperation show on his face. He doesn’t know where that food came from, and for the first time, he doesn’t want to consider where it did. It’s good food, it’s being offered to him, and he wants it. He wouldn’t be able to enjoy it, and especially wouldn’t be able to give it to Tatiana, if he thought of anything else concerning it.

“Let me inside,” Jerome says, and it sounds very much like an order. “It’s freezing cold, and I’m unused to travelling such a distance. Let me put up my feet by the fire for a while, and the gift is yours.”

Gifts usually do not have conditions, Zeke nearly says, but the basket swings once more, almost like a pendulum, and he shuts up. He sighs, doesn’t bother trying to hide his annoyed expression, and steps back. He turns the knob and swings open the door. Tatiana is safe in the bedroom, where Jerome can’t see her. She’ll hear him and know she shouldn’t come out. It should be fine. He can put up with Jerome in his house for a while if it means he gets that food.

Jerome smiles smugly and strides right past him, just like he owns the place. He shoves the basket into Zeke’s stomach as he passes, and Zeke fumbles for it with a small grunt. It’s weighty, actually, a little bigger than he thought it was before, and he resists the urge to start rummaging through it immediately. He doesn’t have any desire to let Jerome see him appreciating the “gift” in his presence.

“So.” Jerome stands in the center of the living area, sliding his leather gloves off to tuck them away in the pocket of his cloak. “This is where you live, Ezekiel.”

Zeke passes by him quietly, eyes flickering to the hallway nervously. “Yes, sir.”

“How…” Jerome sounds like he’s fumbling for a word. _“Quaint.”_

Zeke ducks his head politely, though he feels some annoyance at the tone with which the word was spoken. “It’s not a mansion, sir. But it serves us well.”

“Yes, the beachside view must be lovely.” Jerome crosses the living room and leans over a couch. He grabs at the edge of a drape and pulls it aside, allowing soft gray light to filter in. “I admit to being a little jealous. My quarters at the base nor my villa further north have such a view.”

Zeke says, without thinking, “Tatiana loves the sea.”

“Oh, I see.” Jerome drops the drape; it swings back over the window. “And, you, Ezekiel? Do you like it? Rumor has it that the ocean is what brought you to our land, drifted in from who-knows-where.”

Zeke sets the basket down on the kitchen table. He can’t admit to unconditionally liking the ocean, because it would be false to do so. He likes looking at it, the concept of it, the bounty it brings to the village, but doesn’t really like being in it. It feels too vast and endless to him, and it already tried to consume him whole once. But, he likes it in the summer, when it’s glittering like a sheet of green glass, a lovely backdrop while Tatiana splashes around in the waves.

“I like it as well,” he replies.

“Mm.” Jerome moves towards the fireplace, sweeping his cloak to the side as he crouches down next to the fire. He’s quiet for a moment, rubbing his hands together near the flames and peering up at a variety of knick-knacks and decorations on the hearth. “Well, I imagine that ocean will be a little bit dangerous, you know.” Again, he’s quiet, and then continues with, “Once you and that girl start having children, you know.”

Zeke does his best to not flinch nor recoil. He can’t stop himself from swallowing a nervous lump in his throat, however, and hopes that even that one action isn’t too damning. He tilts his head, faking nonchalance as he peers towards the window. “You are quite right. The water is a siren’s call. An-” Zeke struggles to work the words out of his throat, desperately trying to sound lax. “An easy death, even for a child who knows how to swim.”

“Oh yes.” Jerome stands suddenly and taps his chin, as though in thought. “It’s easy even for an adult to get caught up in the currents and drifted out to sea, Ezekiel, as you well know. A brat would drown immediately, I imagine.”

Zeke’s heart is thumping. He’s mind is racing, constantly reminding him of things that worry him, constantly adding things to that list: The fact that Jerome is in his house, that Tatiana is mad at him, that Tatiana might come out of the bedroom because she’s mad at him, that Jerome might be taunting him because he _knows_ about the baby, Jerome is in his house, Jerome is in his house Jerome is in his house-

“Yes. It would be tragic for any parent.” Zeke lingers on that for a moment, simply breathing, and then adds on, “We shall burn that bridge when we get to it, though. Tatiana and I do not intend to have any children for the foreseeable future. We are in a war, after all, and she is very young besides. There is no rush for a variety of reasons.”

Jerome hums. “Where is Tatiana, Ezekiel? I made the trek out here; it would be rude to not give a hello to the lady of the house.”

* * *

Tatiana stands directly by the door in the dark. She has every candle snuffed out, the oil lamps off, and the drapes shut. Her hand rests on the doorknob, and she can hear her heartbeat in her ears as Jerome speaks. She’d know that ugly, nasally, gods-awful voice from anywhere, through any number of doors or walls. She doesn’t like hearing it in her house. She swallows as she listens to Zeke respond evenly to question after question.

She presses her forehead to the door, trying to stop herself from trembling as they discuss the ocean, drowning, all of those fun things. Her heart beats, faster and faster, and she feels an odd mix of anger and anxiety. Anger because she hears Jerome talking and knows these things are just intended to get a rise out of Zeke, hoping to pull some kind of information from him. Anxiety, because their house is supposed to be the one place where she and Zeke are truly safe from Jerome.

There is nothing Tatiana wants more than to go marching out to give Jerome a piece of her mind, and to pay him back for that “delightfully” sexist letter a few weeks ago, but she knows she would make things worse.

Tatiana exhales haltingly and collapses against the door, curling her fingers against the wood of it.

She feels like she does nothing but make things _worse._

* * *

Jerome is sitting on Zeke’s couch, which he is not a fan of, and has his boots up on the coffee table, which he is also not a fan of. He’s not a fan of the way he’s being looked at, he’s not a fan of feeling like a prisoner in his own home-

“I asked you a question, _Zeke.”_ Jerome smiles, visibly pleased when Zeke flinches and scowls.

“Tatiana is out,” he replies immediately, just a little louder than needed in the hopes that she hears him. He bumbles for an explanation quickly—if he says she’s at the church, he’ll go look for her there. “Someone took her into a town over to look after a sick child. She won’t be home for a while, I’m afraid. She could be gone well into the night.”

He sees Jerome’s smile slam into a frown, and knows exactly what’s going through his head: a tug-of-war between the inquisitive urge to either stay as long as he must to question Tatiana as well, and the selfish urge to not stay in their meager little hovel for any longer than he has to.

He sighs and spreads his arms along the top of the couch, shaking his head. “Well, that’s unfortunate. You’ll give her my regards, will you not?”

“Yes, of course. Of course I will do that.”

Jerome harrumphs and stares into the fire on the other side of the room, his face set in a somewhat blank expression that Zeke cannot read—it’s focus, perhaps, because Zeke sees a glimmer of that sharp, well-hidden intellect flickering in his eyes. He’s quiet, painfully so, and it’s then that Zeke realizes he’s _listening._

He presses the back of his hand to his mouth and forces a cough, just as he catches the faintest sound of what is undoubtedly Tatiana moving in the back of the house. Jerome’s lip twitches, and he looks to Zeke with a scowl. He doesn’t seem to have heard anything, elsewise he’d be wearing a very different expression.

“Pardon,” Zeke says. He glances down and starts fixing the cuff of his shirt aimlessly. “Will you be here much longer?”

“You make it sound like I’m not invited!”

“You are not.”

“Mind your tongue: I take just as easily as I give, Ezekiel.”

Zeke clenches his jaw and looks, subtly he hopes, towards the basket, then to the back of the house, and then into the fireplace before his gaze lingers too long.

“Well.” Jerome sighs and stands, scuffing his boots along the edge of the table. “What a waste of a visit, if Sister Tatiana was not even present.”

Zeke tries to not bristle at this undercurrent of genuine disappointment in Jerome’s voice. Whether he wanted Tatiana to pester her or to make advances, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t like either idea.

“Aren’t you going to show me around your house, Ezekiel?”

His eyes snap over from the fire to Jerome; he’s putting his gloves back on, so he must be planning on leaving, but of _course_ he doesn’t intend to go without getting something besides a rest by the fire and every opportunity in the world to make Zeke squirm. He looks to Zeke with, again, that usually well-hidden intellect glimmering in his eyes, and smiles.

“We’re so _close,_ after all. I’d be quite interested in taking a look around your home. It’s certainly no estate, but-”

“No,” Zeke interrupts. “Good day, sir.”

Jerome’s smile twitches. “Don’t take that tone with me, _boy.”_

“I said good day,” Zeke repeats. “Please, allow me to show you the door.”

Jerome stares him down. “I’m just asking for a look around, Ezekiel. What’s the harm?”

“No harm,” he lies. “I just don’t feel it’s necessary to have you poking around my privacy. I have no obligation to let you do as you please on my land.”

“‘Your land.’ You speak as though you own anything more than a hovel and a stretch of grass.”

Zeke presses his lips and reaches back, curling his fingers around the lip of the table.

“It’s shameful for a man of your status. What kind of terrible influence is that little girl, keeping you here? What kind of awful weight? You could be master of an estate further north, tended to by all manner of servants. She’s just dragging you down if she’s keeping you in this shed.”

_Bear it a little longer. Just a little longer._

“It is only her that’s keeping you here, right?” Jerome regards him, as though genuinely curious, and then smirks. “Do you really like fucking her that much?”

Zeke releases the table, takes two stalking steps forward, and jabs his finger towards the door. “Get the hell out of my house right now.”

Jerome keeps staring him right in the eye, calmly adjusting his gloves all the while. “Hit a sore spot, Ezekiel?”

“Out,” he repeats, hoping he isn’t shaking too visibly. He doesn’t think himself a bad-tempered man, but all he wants to do right now is pick up Jerome and throw him through a window. He can’t recall the last time he was this angry, this upset. “Out, now.”

His hand is shaking. Jerome keeps observing him calmly, clearly amused, and Zeke doesn’t know how long he can keep it together. It’s not only anger now—he feels anxiety, ever stronger, creeping up his throat. He feels desperate. He feels like he would do anything to make this stop, to make Jerome go away.

Zeke remembers the dagger he has, resting in the pocket of his coat.

Zeke sees that Jerome is unarmed.

Zeke thinks, briefly, that he could make it. He could make a lunge for the dagger. He’s faster than Jerome, he knows that. It could be easy: grab the dagger, turn on Jerome, slice his throat. He could do it, and he could be rid of this. All of it. Right now.

But he knows that he can’t.

“Touchy, touchy!” Jerome is grinning now, tugging on the end of his moustache. His voice, loud and obnoxious, rips Zeke from his thoughts. “I didn’t know-”

Against his better judgement, still reeling from the thought of slitting Jerome’s throat, Zeke snaps, “I think you enjoy these types of taunts because you’re jealous.”

Jerome’s grin falls instantly.

Sharp words are better than a sharp blade, for now. “I don’t suppose you ever have anyone waiting for you at home. Can’t get any sort of affection unless you pay for it?” Zeke grits his teeth, sorely disappointed in himself, yet continues on. “I’m unsurprised.”

Jerome doesn’t say anything. Slowly, he lowers his hand, mustache twitching, and glares with a very cold expression at Zeke. And then he says, in such an even, chilly tone of voice that Zeke thinks it might not be so much of a jab as it is a genuine shine of honesty: “I’d rather pay for my company than be whipped.”

Silent and still pointing towards the door, Zeke watches as Jerome brushes some dust away from his cloak and makes for the exit. He wholeheartedly expects for him to walk past and take the basket with him, given Zeke’s extreme lapse in manners, but he does no such thing. He does give it a pointed glare as he opens the door, but then turns that look to Zeke, gives a frigid nod, an “Ezekiel, good day,” and leaves.

The door shuts. Zeke waits five seconds, then ten. And he then crumples.

* * *

“Sir?” The soldier waiting by their horses tilts his head at Jerome. “Did you get what you wanted? Any information?”

Jerome stalks through the snow, grumbling, and snaps, “Shut up. I didn’t tell you to speak.”

The soldier falls silent, not a flicker of worry or panic on his face, as though he’s simply used to these tiny little outbursts and doesn’t think much of them anymore.

Jerome takes the reins of his horse, sneering at the peasants who walk by, giving him wary looks. His horse whinnies quietly and nudges at him, as gentle and affectionate a beast as always. Unconsciously, he reaches up and pats its neck while glaring back at the house he just came from. “No new leads; not quite. But I’ll be damned if there isn’t something going on that he doesn’t want me in particular to know about. And he’s a fool if he thinks he’s clever enough to keep it from me for any longer.”

* * *

Without anyone coming to get her, Tatiana leaves the room as soon as she hears the front door shut. It’s eerily quiet, save for the sound of Zeke breathing heavily. Shaking, she turns the corner to the hallway and finds him, crouched down in the living room with his face in his hands. She can see him taking deep, heaving breaths even from here, and they only get more noticeable as she approaches him. She throws their argument to the side, leans down over him, and puts a hand on his back, desperate to somehow ease him through his panic attack.

“Zeke,” she says quietly. “He’s gone.”

“I know,” he whispers back, muffled through his hands. “I know.”

“Breathe,” she tells him. She drags her hand up to his head, softly moving her fingers through his hair as she strokes him. He moves with her easily as she pulls his head closer to her, leaning it against her chest. “You’re okay.”

“I know I am,” he mumbles. “I know, I know, I know. He’s gone.”

Tatiana swallows as she keeps stroking him, watching with relief as the minutes pass and he stops shaking. His breathing evens out, and his body relaxes as well. She’s guided him through panic attacks before—countless times—and she’s always impressed at his ability to calm himself quickly. It almost leaves her feeling a little unnecessary, like she’s just smothering him, but it makes her feel better to be there in whatever small way.

“He’s gone,” Zeke breathes. He lowers one hand, resting his forearm against his knee, and lightly pulls the other away from his face. “Tatiana. I wanted to kill him.”

She freezes, her fingers stuttering in their steady pace through his hair, at the earnest, plain tone of his voice.

He pushes his face back into his hand, mumbling again, “I wanted to kill him.”

Honestly, she can’t blame him. She heard it all, right down to every sneering “Ezekiel,” every thinly-veiled insult, every careful barb. And she heard it all when Jerome spoke of her like she was only a burden. Like she was a weight clinging to Zeke’s hand, begging him to stay here, to bend to her will, to do what she wants, and she can’t help but wonder if he’s right. If that is what she’s doing. If they—if Zeke—would be better off in the north, in the comforts of some estate he lords over.

What if. What if he’s only sticking around because he likes-

“I know you heard what he said,” Zeke says. “I know you did.”

Tatiana presses her lips, pushes him into her chest a little more. “Yeah.”

“It isn’t true,” he assures softly. “You have to know it isn’t. I- I’m here because I like being here. I can’t imagine myself in the lap of luxury, depending on servants. I don’t- I don’t- What he said about-”

“I know what you mean,” she assures. “You don’t have to repeat-”

“I don’t just stay here because I like- I like doing what he said.” He groans then, putting his other hand against his face along the other and pressing at his eyes. “I have a dagger in the pocket of my coat, there on the hanger. I wanted to kill him.”

Tatiana doesn’t know what to say to this but, “I’m glad you didn’t. Blood is a hassle to clean.” She smiles, weary, as a trembling laugh leaves him, and pulls him a little closer to her. “It’ll be okay now,” she assures again. “What- Well, I think you need to sleep. Your temper is short.”

Zeke sighs, sagging in her arms. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get upset before.”

“It’s okay.” Tatiana winds her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, eyeing the grandfather clock in the corner. “I- I shouldn’t have pushed like that. I’m sorry.”

“No, you-”

“I’ll take equal responsibility,” she insists.

He’s silent, then sighs again, ever deeper. “Okay.” A heartbeat passes, and then, “You seemed bothered by something. Something about not helping me. Do you want to talk about it?”

A prickling chill starts in Tatiana’s gut. She swallows, shakes her head, and squeezes him tighter. “Not right now. It’s best you go to sleep. And in the spirit of a truce, I’ll get someone to come put in that stupid floorboard so neither of us have to.”

“Very well.”

Zeke stirs then, making to stand up, and Tatiana releases him. He groans as he gets to his feet, as though it takes every bit of energy he has. Tatiana follows, unconsciously reaching to hold his hand in both of hers; he looks down at her, exhausted and bleary-eyed, and she presses her lips as she tries to find just what it is that she wants to say.

What comes out of her mouth is just, “We’ll get through this.”

Zeke blinks, a little more awake. He studies her quietly, and then smiles, just a little, in that endearing way of his, like it’s a little unnatural for him and he’s unsure of the expression. The smile drops then, and he sighs. Again. “I should not have put you into this situation.”

“It’s not like you meant to.” Tatiana sighs, leans her head against his arm, and takes a deep breath. Something on the table catches her eye, and she turns her gaze towards it to find a large, wicker basket. She crinkles her nose. “What did he want? And what’s that stuff on the table?”

Zeke blinks and looks back, his expression darkening a little. “Food. And lots of it. We obviously have no warm feelings towards Jerome, and never will, but he’s granted us this. It’ll last a while if we portion it out carefully.”

“But I-” Tatiana pulls away from him and makes her way to the table, shifting the cloth atop the basket away. It is, as he said, full of food, and it’s so much more than the flatbread and dried meat he presented earlier, still sitting on the counter. She hates how badly she wants it. “What if he’s tampered with it, or-”

“He wouldn’t. He has no reason to off us, or even to so much as make us sick.” Zeke joins her and pulls out a jar of coffee beans. He turns it in his hand, scrutinizing the contents with a bothered look on his face. “This is high quality stuff. It will be good for the mornings, no doubt.”

Tatiana takes the jar from him when he holds it out, pensively wrapping her fingers around the glass. “But- but, sweetie-”

“Tatiana, if I get poisoned and die, or even if I get sick, there is no one left to do his work for him,” Zeke reasons. He digs a little deeper into the basket and finds a jar of what looks like elderberry jam. A little further down, covered by another kerchief, are rashers of bacon and cuts of some other kind of meat, all of which he puts on the counter for her to see. “No, he had another motive. He wanted to get into the house.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Tatiana protests. “That’s like if you told me a- a- a Terror wanted to get into our house! Our house!”

“He was looking around. He’s suspicious. He kept asking after you today.” Zeke pulls something else from the basket: a bottle of wine, of which he shows her the label. It’s from a fancy brewery in a city up north. Very delicious, but very alcoholic. “But I suspect he does not know what it is he is looking for.”

Doesn’t know what he’s looking for indeed.

Tatiana helps him rummage through the basket. They put all of what they find on the table: meat, eggs, coffee, jam, preserves, flour, root vegetables, wine, cream. It’s all a lot, and by the time they’ve finished unloading the basket, much of their table is full. The sight pleases Tatiana, but she has to wonder-

“Where did he get this?” Tatiana asks quietly. Her eyes are fixed on the food, and she just hopes that her hunger isn’t visible in them. “Who’s going hungry so we get to eat? Just because he wanted to play a mind game?”

Zeke looks down at her with a frown, then back to the food. Tatiana stares up at him, lips pressed, and hates that she can see him blaming himself. He’s wondering, so clearly, if it is his fault that people are going to be hungry. His fault, because he thinks that he can’t provide for his family on his own. It’s a knife in his side—she knows that neither of them are going to be eating this food in good conscience.

Maybe this too is Tatiana’s fault, the way that Jerome hates Zeke. Perhaps it is her fault that they receive Jerome’s loathing, his sneering and his cruelties. Maybe if she hadn’t rejected him so aggressively when she was younger, he would be nicer. Maybe he wouldn’t hate Zeke so much. Maybe if she had just been kinder to him. Then again, she can’t know if that would fix anything. She’s already done everything to invoke Jerome’s rage upon them, and she can’t go back in time and fix her actions. Unfortunately, it seems to be Zeke who has to live with their consequences.

“Did you know that he says your name a lot?” Tatiana asks him then, hoping to at least remove his mind from the guilt the food brings him.

Zeke looks down to her, away from the table. “I never noticed. Do you really think he does?”

Disgusted that she can so clearly hear Jerome’s voice repeating Zeke’s name, over and over and over, she narrows her eyes. He doesn’t deserve to say it. “A constant repeating of a name… It’s just like the way someone talks to a dog.”

Tatiana jumps and nearly shrieks as Zeke reacts; a loud sound crashes through the room as he slams his fist against the table. He’s scowling down at the food when she nervously looks over, wearing a rough, harsh expression she doesn’t see often: it’s anger, pure and genuine, and he is wearing it so openly. But, it’s not towards her. None of the physicality or anger is for her. It’s for himself, for Jerome, for this war. She knows him well enough to know that.

She hates this war. He was never like this before. She hates the Zofians for doing this to him.

“I am not his dog.” His voice comes from deep, deep in his chest, rumbling like thunder. It sounds stronger than he looks; at least that is an assurance to her that he still has life in him. “I am not _anyone’s_ dog.”


End file.
